Crocodile Fever Review – The Sisters’ Unbridled Revenge Has a Taste of Chaos | stage

TThe rosary is whipped within seconds. God-fearing Alanna (Rachel Rooney, her movements angular like a frightened bird) is scrubbing the cook with a toothbrush when her muddy-booted, foul-mouthed, IRA-recruited little sister Vianna (Megan Tyler, also the play’s writer, brutality written all over her) bursts through the window of their childhood home. This gritty revenge play has a flair for chaos, transforming poignant domestic drama into surreal and horrific horror.

This new production premiered at Edinburgh’s Traverse in 2019 and is set during a stormy night in 1980s South Armagh, and is an inspiring character study of these two troubled sisters. Tensions start high and continue to escalate. Outside, gun-toting Brits roam the streets, while inside, Alana tiptoes under the rule of their abusive, now paralyzed father (Stephen Kennedy, with a slippery, sinister entrance, the fear of which has built up before he even takes the stage).

After serving time for a crime for which both women feel guilty, Vianna’s reappearance unleashes a tornado of violence into the life of young and pious Alana, as she cleans up every speck of dust and sips alcohol like air. Under Mehmet Ergen’s supervision, we get to know the sisters fully; When Viana tries to get Alana to relax, the younger brother is easy and free, while the older one is always withdrawn. Through bitterly comic dialogue, they uncover the damage done to them by patriarchal colonial powers — here, their father and the soldiers (James Beadle Holden) turn into one brutal enemy — and in a heady fog of hatred, they agree to set things right.

Tyler’s black comedy isn’t afraid to take wild, deadly leaps. The sisters drink the house dry, their father’s brutality is fully realized, and soon Merve Yörük’s attentive design of the original kitchen-living room is covered in a mess much harder to clean than the Fianna’s dirty shoe prints. Although some of the carefully crafted clarity and tension slip when the final scenes flirt with absurdist hallucinations, the ruthless bravado, grisly humor, and justice-driven bloodlust create a vice-like hold on our attention. Gorgeously gory, Crocodile Fever offers the dark pleasure of watching these sisters tear their past limb from limb.