Returning with the souvenir of class warfare

Perhaps no photo in recent times has screamed "bring back the guillotine" better than the gluttonous, grinning shot of Exxon's Lee Raymond, gloating over the oil giant's surging profits as average Americans struggled with record gas prices. And perhaps this ever widening gap between the pay for CEOs and the pay for the rest of us -- keeping up with inflation would be nice, at least -- makes this as good as time as any for a return of Wallace Shawn's monologue "The Fever."

Shawn is probably best known to mainstream America for the nebbish losers he usually plays on sitcoms ("The Cosby Show") and films ("The Princess Bride," "Clueless"), which is unfortunate, given his equally numerous writing credits. I admittedly was not familiar with the part of his canon, but I found "The Fever" to be a challenging yet ultimately thrilling hour and a half of theatre.

The story focuses around a nameless traveler, played by Shawn himself, who is recalling one specific trip to an anonymous third-world country in the middle of a rebel uprising, in particular one night of terrifying visions and violent illness and spent on the bathroom floor. This country has shattered everything he thought he understood, everything that he thought made him happy. What made him or the Lee Raymonds of the world better than the beggar women he saw on the street? Hard work? No, it really boils down to luck.

Liberal guilt might not seem like the best topic for a 90-minute monologue, but Shawn's natural storytelling ability keeps it enthralling. The story fluctuates between conversational and literary, perfectly paced from beat to beat. The details of the traveler's life outside of the travels are pure banality but nonetheless so beautifully embellished that it sounds new.

The lighting design, by Jennifer Tipton, is exceptional. With the small set -- a small study that takes up only a small portion in the middle of the stage -- and limited movement by Shawn, the lighting almost works as its own set changes, transforming the traveler's study from the dingy third-world hotel room to his comfortable home world. The final darkness that envelops the stages leaves a ephemeral glow on Shawn's head that leaves just the right haunting final note.

As a nice touch, Shawn invited the audience to show up 30 minutes early to join him for champagne onstage. After the show, I'd wished the toast was after the show so that we could include a bit of discussion of what we had just seen, but it was a great idea that I'd love see more performers adopt. And -- save the yahoo whose cell phone rang a monophonic "Rondo alla Turca" for about a minute during a crucial moment in the show --I'm proud of my fellow audience members. Not one of them asked Shawn about "The Cosby Show" or "The Princess Bride."

Inconceivable!