Wallace Shawn\u2019s career must be a mixed blessing.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been a performer nearly half a century and can probably live comfortably off \u201cThe Princess Bride\u201d residuals for the rest of his life, but that film overshadows his work as a lauded playwright and raconteur. Unless you\u2019re Corky from \u201cWaiting for Guffman,\u201d you probably aren\u2019t itching for \u201cMy Dinner with Andre\u201d action figures.<\/p>\n
Bay Area director John Wilkins certainly knows Shawn\u2019s work. His former company, Last Planet
Theatre, used to hold an entire festival based around Shawn\u2019s plays. He has the very theater
history of someone who\u2019d want to stage Shawn\u2019s divisive 1990 solo show \u201cThe Fever,\u201d which is running at Clio\u2019s Bookstore through April 18 in an extended run. In fact, Wilkins actually beat Shawn himself to the punch in using this play to respond to 2026 America.<\/p>\n
Staging a play in a bookstore may seem like it could be a logistical nightmare, but Shawn\u2019s original performances were all in private living rooms; he only brought it to a proper stage once its
reputation had flourished. Wilkins sets the action in the literally-underground Oakland bookstore
and bar, with the tour beginning in the Poetry section near copies of Homer and Dante. If that
weren\u2019t unconventional enough, each performance is scheduled to begin at 11pm.<\/p>\n
The narrative brings us a nameless man (Beno\u00eet Monin) in a white sport coat, striped pants, and
red-feathered \u201cshoes.\u201d He enters and flashes a blinding strobe light in his face as he recalls men
being sent to the electric chair. Sans strobe and mask, he tells the first-of-many anecdotes about
his affluent upbringing in an unnamed country. It doesn\u2019t sound happy, but it sounds full: full
plates at every meal, full haul of presents under every Christmas tree. As time goes on, our man
becomes all the more aware of how much he has whilst many of his countrymen \u2014 indeed, even
his family\u2019s servants \u2014 are stretched beyond their means as they attempt to afford the basics.<\/p>\n
Little by little, he goes from the man who believes \u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful thing to have money in a
country where people are poor\u201d to someone for whom the idea of redistributing wealth doesn\u2019t
seem that far-fetched. Of course, he knows what happens to enemies of the state who act on such ideas \u2014 just look at those guys who wound up in the electric chair.<\/p>\n
You know \u201cThe Fever\u201d is a fantasy by its depiction of a wealthy scion having an altruistic
epiphany about their fortune. Our man \u2014 who may or may not have read \u201cAtlas Shrugged\u201d \u2014 is
anonymously gifted Marx\u2019s \u201cDas Kapital\u201d and suddenly has a new purpose in life. It\u2019s a
comforting thought, if not a realistic one, but what is drama if not a playground for
verisimilitude.<\/p>\n
Monin is a lively guide through both the aisles of Clio\u2019s (audience members are given wrist
bands upon entry) and our man\u2019s self-realization. He lays bare political fears, sexual proclivities,
and coping mechanisms (at one point, he shares bright-red drinks with the audience) as he finds
himself unable to deny a societal truth.\u00a0For the most part, it\u2019s an intriguing and surreal journey.<\/p>\n
The problem comes from the script crossing the line from \u201cloquacious\u201d to simply \u201clong-winded.\u201d
It makes its point several times ever, but Shawn\u2019s script spirals into redundancy as it nears its end, proverbially beating the audience over the head.<\/p>\n
This does Shawn\u2019s own story a disservice, and it\u2019s a bit of a pain if, like me, you arrived in Oakland via public transit. Indeed, the performance I attended began a half-hour late and ran over the advertised 90 minutes. I didn\u2019t get back to my bed in San Francisco until after 3 a.m.<\/p>\n
There are several moments in \u201cThe Fever\u201d which require the audience to step over corpses to
hear our man\u2019s next rich-person tale. One thinks of traversing through major Bay Area cities on a
daily basis as oligarchs price most of us out of house and home.<\/p>\n
The text has lost none of its power as an unconventional call-to-arms. The flaw comes when it knows it\u2019s preaching to the converted, but continues to pile on. This frequently-sold-out production is a surreal tour through selfless enlightenment, but even it\u2019s brief running time runs the risk of testing a viewer\u2019s endurance.<\/p>\n
Charles Lewis III claims to be an award-nominated journalist, culture critic, and performing artist born and raised in San Francisco. He alleges to have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, the San Francisco Examiner, and many more. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man\u2019s Idiot.<\/p>\n
\u2018THE FEVER\u2019<\/p>\n
By Wallace Shawn, presented by Cabaret Clio<\/p>\n
Through: April 18<\/p>\n
Where: Clio\u2019s Books, 353 Grand Ave., Oakland<\/p>\n
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes, no intermission<\/p>\n
Tickets: $35; eventbrite.com (search for cabaret clio)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wallace Shawn\u2019s career must be a mixed blessing. He\u2019s been a performer nearly half a century and can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,7,332,967,143,145,144,1058,420],"class_list":["post-261611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-east-bay","tag-entertainment","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-theater","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}