The Fever Syndrome
Hampstead Theatre
April 5 2022
 

IT’S a pity that a play with so many arresting ideas and such relevance to the modern world should find itself mired in excessive detail and dead-end arguments. Sadly, this is the case with Hampstead Theatre’s premiere of  Alexis Zegerman’s latest offering.  

Not that the ingredients for a first-rate drama aren’t there.  Professor Richard Miles, played by the inimitable Robert Lindsay, is a renowned IVF maestro who has provided thousands of desperate men and women with babies they could not otherwise have borne. Richard is about to receive a lifetime achievement award second only to the Nobel Prize and, in the eyes of the public, is an undoubted luminary. His family have gathered for the presentation event, and all should be ripe for celebration except…

…the professor is deep in the clutches of Parkinson’s disease; his family of assorted offspring and others are more diverted by their battle with the unpalatable realities of life than with his glory; meanwhile his granddaughter, Lily, carries a genetic malfunction that is the fever syndrome of the play’s title.  

While the momentous theme, the Manhattan setting and the turbulent patriarchal family all make a worthy claim on the Arthur Miller legacy, verbose characters and fragmented storylines inhibit essential passion and urgency. At the same time, too much of the substance is vocalised when, in great drama, we should imbibe it from actions and subtext too.    

Lindsay  of course, is splendid and fills the stage, even as the stairlift in which he sits creeps pathetically down to the family group, reducing him to an enfeebled has-been. The loss of nerve control, in keeping with his illness, and the husky voice, he displays flawlessly without compromising any of his force or charisma — a brilliant achievement in itself, leaving us in no doubt that Lindsay is a worthy candidate to play Miller’s Willy Loman or Joe Keller. 

There are outstanding performances too from Alexandra Gilbreath as Richard’s cuckoo-in the-nest second wife, Lisa Dillon as his forceful daughter Dot, Alex Waldman and Sam Marks as his twin — but very different — sons, Jake Fairbrother as one son’s gay partner and Bo Poraj as the out-of-his-depth son-in-law. 

Lizzie Clachan’s whole house of a set is wondrous, though the retirement of couples to different rooms where they bicker endlessly tends to diversify the action and so detract from the central heat of the drama. 

This is a hugely researched play, with much to say about the nature of inheritance, both pecuniary and genetic, and director Roxana Silbert with the playwright has definitely not shied away from the science. But drama must take us with it, not blind us with facts. In the end, much would be improved if we could empathise more with the characters and feel their jeopardy, not just learn what they think. Even great acting can’t compensate for this over-written, over-thought, eventual diatribe.