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Posted in: Audio Dramas, BBC, TV | Tagged: The Fever
The Fever: Cate Blanchett Stars in One-Woman Play for BBC Radio 4
Cate Blanchett stars in an audio version of Wallace Shawn's one-person stage play The Fever, now streaming on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Article Summary
- Cate Blanchett stars in a new BBC Radio 4 audio adaptation of Wallace Shawn's play The Fever.
- The Fever is a dramatic monologue critiquing global capitalism through a privileged woman's eyes.
- Originally performed by Shawn, the play delves into a personal and political awakening.
- Stream The Fever on BBC Sounds; it may later be available as an audiobook.
In a surprise premiere on BBC Radio 4, Cate Blanchett stars in The Fever, a 90-minute audio drama version of Wallace Shawn's critically acclaimed stage play that's performed as a one-actor show. The Fever is a blistering monologue which sets wry humour against a forensic dismantling of global capitalism. Blanchett plays an unnamed liberal woman from a privileged world in Shawn's drama. Suffering from a sense of disconnection from her comfortable life, she chooses to travel to a civil-war-torn country. Falling ill and sick with fever, the woman is forced to retreat into her hotel bedroom, where she is stuck between the sink and the toilet. Surrounded by poverty, in her fevered state, she descends into self-examination.
Shawn wrote The Fever in 1990, and the dramatic one-person play began life performed by him only in private living rooms by appointment only so that he could sidestep traditional theatrical norms. That shaped the play's reputation as a special, legendary theatrical event by the time it was produced at theatres. Shawn walked amongst the audience before the start of the play to interact with them to break the Fourth Wall and establish an emotional rapport so that they would view his character as a person rather than just a fictional creation. The play can be performed by actors of any gender or race since Shawn wanted The Fever to be a universal examination of a moral awakening of a comfortable, fundamental decent but complacent middle-class person who experiences a political and social awakening when they discover their culpability and complicity in the horrors the Third World have to suffer to ensure the comfort of those living in the West. The play has been performed many times since, including a filmed version starring Vanessa Redgrave. That someone like Blanchett is now starring in an audio version is a big deal, even if the BBC is absolutely terrible at marketing and letting people know this new production exists.
The Fever is streaming on BBC Sounds for the next four weeks. Later, it might be sold commercially online as an audiobook.
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