★★★✰✰
Drawing on Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, and possibly some Pinter, Alexis Zegerman’s new play balances intimate questions about family dynamics with the larger questions about human nature. The family of an aging scientist Professor Richard Myers, based on real life researchers like Patrick Steptoe who pioneered IVF, gather in a New York brownstone house to see their aging patriarch receive a lifetime achievement award for his services to science. As the play unfolds, each of Richard’s three now adult children unpack their emotional baggage, slowly confronting the reality of their intellectually brilliant but absent father succumbing to a degenerative disease.
A recipient of a Sloan Commission to encourage playwrights to explore scientific and technological themes in their work, the play uses its themes to complement each other, digging deeper into the fundamental questions about fatherhood and genetics without feeling clunky or contrived. The writing is strongest when these themes interplay and overlap, when the idea of Myers as a symbolic father thanks to his scientific achievements clashes with the failure of Myers as an actual one. His daughter Dot remarks that he has photos of the children who were born because of his research, but none of his own granddaughter.
With such rich emotional characters to navigate, it is no wonder that each performance is strong and nuanced. Alex Waldmann as Thomas, an emotionally precarious artist and black sheep of the family, just stood out above the rest, tragically internalising his father’s homophobia and swallowing his own indignation. His rose-tinted impression of his once physically domineering father is exacerbated by the physical reality of Robert Lindsey’s performance as Richard. Confined to a wheelchair for the most part of the play, Lindsey created a distinct sense of fighting against his own body to stand, eat, and talk. His character’s Parkinson’s disease was handled with care, sympathy, and dedication.
Under Roxana Silbert’s direction, the play’s emotional progress naturally ebbs and flows. The cast pour through an intricately designed set that squashes them together, squeezing each drop of insecurity out in the confined space. The house, with its peeling wallpapers and damp, is an apt symbol for Richard leaving the lingering question of what will happen after he passes away.
However, Zegerman is a victim of her own ambition. In trying to juggle so many character dramas, backstories, and motivations, she is unable to succulently tie up the many of the themes. The final scene feels lacklustre with an overly saccharine finale; instead of confronting the emotional trauma of a neglectful father the play concludes with a speech about love with the family holding hands, anything but the emotional gut punch that was promised in the first act: an underwhelming conclusion to an otherwise impeccably crafted story. It felt distinctly American in its outlook, something not aided by the Seinfeld-esque jazz riffs played between scene changes. If the play were set in Britain, would it be so optimistic?
The Fever Syndrome is at Hampstead Theatre until 30th April.
Words by Alexander Cohen
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