The Fever Syndrome is a dramatised lecture set in a New York brownstone occupied by the super-brainy Myers family. The old man, Prof. Richard, is an IVF expert whose daughter, Dot, wants to defrost her embryos and have a second baby. Cue lots of chat about in vitro technology in the 1970s. Dot’s daughter, Lily, has a hereditary ailment that causes epileptic seizures. This, too, is discussed in further Ted Talk passages. And Prof. Richard suffers from incontinence and Parkinson’s disease so these conditions are aired as well. It’s perfectly riveting for medics. Less so for civilians who may not share the view of the Myers family that everyone in the Myers family is a world-class intellectual.
Robert Lindsay stars as Prof. Richard but he’s far too athletic to play an enfeebled patriarch. He keeps springing out of his wheelchair like a fidgety boy scout. And the designer hasn’t even bothered to add a few white streaks to his Rick Astley quiff. The prof. is an embittered curmudgeon who outlines his scientific views in a passage that seems to date from 2008, when Sarah Palin was a candidate for the vice-presidency. ‘We do not have time to get into debates with dim-witted governors of Alaska. You have to ignore the dissenters. You have to be elitist, arrogant, tenacious. You have to be a god.’
Some have suggested that Lindsay took the role because it’s a modern Lear. The true reason becomes clear at the end of Act One when he gets to eat a hot supper on stage. The food is real. You can smell it. Actors love free grub.
Apart from the medical debates, the characters cope with various family crises but the dramatic temperature never rises above the level of The Archers or The Brady Bunch.
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