Review: Crocodile Fever (Arcola Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The people who know you the best, often your own flesh and blood, are the ones who can hurt you the most. In Meghan Tyler’s Crocodile Fever, two sisters do irrevocable harm to their father and to one another – emotional agony plays out on stage, alongside some visceral, much more physical pain. Can any level or torment pull the pair apart, or are we, in fact, forever bound to those we grew up with? Can Tyler, or anyone, be expected to sufficiently answer, across just two hours at Dalston’s Arcola Theatre?

Crocodile Fever begins in the sisters’ childhood home, lovingly and compulsively kept pristine by elder sister Alannah. It’s Northern Ireland in the late-80s, and alongside the constant threat of homes being raided, Alannah gets a real fright when she opens the front door to find her own sister. Away for eleven years, eight of them behind bars, Fianna has stopped in to see how the old place is doing, pay respects to their late mother, and to try to reconcile with her estranged sibling… her now-paralysed father, not so much.

A play of two distinct but firmly connected halves, Tyler’s script is witty and quick-fire in its dark humour, and captivating in its subtle reveals of a brutal history. Act two is a blood-soaked fever dream, with the two women both revelling in and repulsed by the sadism on display, but the progressive tensions throughout the first act mean it somehow all makes sense. As written by Tyler, Fianna and Alannah are diametrically opposed in their views of and approaches to the world, but it’s the moments where she allows them to slip into revelatory moments that show their true natures, each far more similar to the others’ façade, where the beauty of their dynamic lies.

Also starring as young rebel Fianna, Meghan Tyler is thrilling to watch from her first, window-breaking entrance, and keeps up the energy throughout. She carries a tenderness just below the brashness and wild-child persona that ensures we know how deeply she cares for her sister, and just how wounded she truly is. Tyler has given herself the singular task of laughing at, being incensed by, and worrying for Alannah, and manages this most precarious of balancing acts perfectly. Her limited time shared on stage with their father, a mock-caring and very effective Stephen Kennedy, is breathtaking in its tension and pointed revelations.

With James Pedley-Holden appearing as a British soldier only briefly, much of the runtime is reliant on the strength of the sisters. Somehow, alongside Tyler’s portrayal, Rachel Rooney manages to be even more memorable as Alannah. From the look of vein-bursting stress that appears the moment a mess is made, to the delivery of lines that would sound ludicrous if not for her conviction, to a blood-curdling, and blood-drawing, rage that she later lets loose, Rooney is utterly magnificent. A comedic highlight is Alannah’s flustered but confident explanation of her mishearing of Toto’s “Africa,” wherein she keeps perfect control of the scene while Tyler does all she can to keep her character’s hysterics from dropping into her own. Who wouldn’t struggle at an interpretation if this:

“It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you,

There’s nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do,

I guess it rains on an apricot.”

Director Mehmet Ergen plays nicely into the absurdity of the whole thing, allowing the tone of the piece and its performances to become more outlandish as the evening wears on. Ergen opts for a natural, fairly easy-going pace in the first half, where conversations and tense and assertive but flow as real life reunions do. Later on, this same rhythm clashes beautifully with the madness the crowd re-enters for – audiences are asked to leave the auditorium between acts, and the payoff upon return is certainly worth it.

Merve Yörük’s set is attractive, simple, almost like a show-home in case we had any doubt of the lengths to which Alannah’s compulsive neatness has descended. In a nice show of the characters’ priorities, the disastrous redecoration audience’s re-enter to for the second act has only one corner unscathed – no matter how much carnage they both allow and create, the sisters won’t allow their mother’s mantelpiece shrine to come to harm. Gül Sağer’s costumes are equally character-driven, with Fianna having an unkempt, thrown together ensemble down to a piece of rope in place of a belt, and Alannah’s own blouse and skirt being so finely pressed they seem barely to move as she struts about the kitchen.

A sensational contribution comes courtesy of Austin Spangler, fight director for the production, who helps enormously in kicking the chaotic emotions at play into the highest gear when the moment calls for it. There is also an exciting surprise from puppet designer Rachael Canning, in a truly demented final sequence which will have jaws dropped to the floor.

Unfortunately, the utter chaos of this final scene is what lost me somewhat. An earlier metaphor seemingly became literal, and though the scene was incredibly effective and I found myself thrilled by the execution, I couldn’t help but feel slightly let down that the more grounded quality which can maintained into the second act bloodbath had now been so firmly put aside. It’s a personal issue, but one that pulled me just that bit too far out of the show to truly call it a faultless night of theatre.

Crocodile Fever is bombastic, unsettling, and more often than not completely compelling. Ever at the moment where things went too overboard for my own tastes, I can’t deny that the show had my rapt attention, and the performances from the two leading ladies were so perfectly-pitched that minor complains were all too easy to set aside. Be warned of the carnage going in, but otherwise enter with a sense of curiosity, of fear, and of total excitement at the thrills to be had.

Crocodile Fever plays at the Arcola Theatre until November 22^nd

For tickets and information visit https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/crocodilefever/

Photos by Ikin Yum