“Fever Dreams” at Theaterworks Hartford
Robert Schneider in Connecticut
21 October 2024
If Luke Cantarella’s set for Fever Dreams (of animals on the verge of extinction) at TheaterWorks Hartford were an Air BnB, it would be booked constantly. Cantarella has fashioned a cabin in the woods, rustic but homey and just right for two. What’s more, it’s fully stocked and packed with details—right down to the pesky kitchen cabinet door that won’t stay closed though the owner keeps promising to fix it. There’s a screen porch for cuddling, a firepit for soulful conversation, and a fridge to cool the wine. At night you can hear cicadas in the trees. As a love nest for a couple suffering from long-term adultery, however, the cabin has one big drawback: her husband can find it. In fact, he’s known about it for quite some time.
Doug Savant and Tim DeKay.
Photo credit: Michael Marques.
Armed with this information, the reader can be excused for imagining Fever Dreams to be a drama of marital infidelity. It’s more complicated than that. The author, Jeffrey Lieber, who has had a long career in television as a writer and show runner, has packed a whole season of revelations into one play. For starters, the adulterers, a doctor named Zack and a wildlife biologist named Adele, have strict rules about what they can communicate when they’re not at the cabin, so there is a host of unresolved issues for them to delve into when they finally get together. Their dialogue is televisual and talky-cute. Adele, especially, is loquacious on the subject of not communicating with Zach. She’s built a wall between their trysts and the rest of her life. (That’s the term she uses: “There’s a wall.”) They love to talk and there’s no practical barrier to them dropping each other a line between their annual (or semi-annual) rendezvous. Under the circumstances, the play isn’t so much about isolation as insulation; the characters have done this to themselves.
As a result, when the husband, a musician named Miller, eventually shows up, we know very little about him and even less about the nature of his marriage to Adele. The first act piles up mysteries for the second act to resolve. Why would the husband risk upsetting an arrangement which suits him? Why does he mostly want to talk about things that happened 30 years ago? Why is he drinking so much? Why does he keep a single bullet in his revolver? From the playwright’s point of view, these circumstances answer each other. He comes so he can talk. He drinks so he can talk more. He has a single bullet in the revolver because this instrument is bound to go off. (Yes, Chekhov’s theory about the firearm introduced in the first act that never goes to waste is proved once again.) From my point of view, however, this exquisite cabin begins to look like a place where self-dramatizing people can come to self-dramatize.
It doesn’t help that Adele (played by Lana Young) in an extended simile, compares their mating habits to those of a species of beetle. Or that Miller (Tim DeKay) opines with small provocation that “wandering in the dark is the rhythm section of grief”. Adele’s persistent anthropomorphizing of the animals she studies goes ill with her profession as a scientist. For his part, Zack (Doug Savant) carefully washes his hands in the best medical manner, then dries them on his shirt and uses them to smooth his hair before he stitches up the wound—not the most careful of physicians.
Fever Dreams is one of those remorselessly calculated plays, nowadays grown rare, that can be summarized with a list of required props: revolver, box with an engagement ring, single bullet (found in revolver later), guitar, whisky bottle, surgical kit, a note found in a dead man’s shoe and, finally, a portable electric drill to fix the cabinet door.
One of the hazards of a fully realized, three-dimensional set is that it leads the spectator to expect the same qualities from the action that’s played within it. If not, all the realism stays in the scenery. The actors do as much and as well as anyone possibly could with this material. Rob Ruggiero’s direction is more than capable, but these Fever Dreams could have been avoided with a few lengthy phone calls.
