Do you know what your hands do while you sleep? In her new three−part play, "The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East," Naomi Wallace asks us to consider the consequences of our actions regardless of whether we are aware of them or not.
In "The Fever Chart," characters from Palestine, Israel and Iraq deal with trying to establish connections amid turbulent times. All of the characters are lonely and alienated, making their various attempts to find human sympathy all the more touching. Adding to the effectiveness of the script is the mingling and mixing of reality with dreams, producing an interesting and successful commentary on contemporary issues and humanity in general.
With accents that never falter, the actors successfully cement the play's setting in the Middle East. Presented to us in three "visions," we witness a Palestinian woman's interaction with a young Israeli soldier in a small Rafah zoo, a grieving Palestinian father's confrontation with an Israeli nurse in West Jerusalem, and lastly, an Iraqi pigeon enthusiast's conversation with himself. The three stories overlap and converge in both moving and discouraging ways, yet Wallace still manages to provide surprising endings that compensate for the at−times dishearteningly complicated dialogue and plot.
The set is appropriately simple: A white tile floor and ceiling of dangling, ripped white fabric situates the scene somewhere that is dream−like and universal. The young Israeli soldier (Dan Shaked) opens the Rafah zoo story — and the play — with an extremely convincing performance that only becomes more impressive as the first story matures. The most confusing story of the play does its job setting the tone for the following performances by introducing us to what initially appears to be chaos, which eventually gives way to coherence.
In the second story, Najla Said gives us a painful performance as Tanya Langer, a young nurse who has survived a lung transplant. Ken Baltin also offers a strong performance as Mourid Kamal, a Palestinian father who informs Tanya that her lungs came from his son, who died a few years prior. The shifting balance between them is handled well, although Said's graphic delivery of her sexual encounters is uncomfortable at best. Similarly, when Baltin gropes Said's breast, the moment's purpose is unclear and thus appears gratuitous.
The highlight of Said's performance is her fits of lung seizure, during which she agonizingly gasps for air. Her character takes on a new power in her helplessness. These disruptions only encourage the circuit of kindness from Baltin's character, who uses the fits as examples of the toll on her body resulting from her refusal to accept his help and love.
In the end, however, the point of the second piece makes its intended impact, and Baltin's last line is especially poignant and well−delivered. There is also a comic element to the story, thanks to the young janitor working at the clinic (Harry Hobbs), who does much to diffuse the otherwise traumatic emotional tension of the scene.
The third section is a monologue from Ali (Ibrahim Miari), an Iraqi pigeon breeder who directly addresses and interacts with the audience as he relates burdensome memories from his life. While this is the most difficult story to keep engaging, Miari does a strikingly solid job with his character, making for an impressively cohesive performance.
Most memorably, Miari imitates the calls of his pigeons in an uncannily precise way. The pigeon motif returns from the first "vision," implying the freedom associated with those who fly, and further stressing the play's overarching theme of human connectedness.
During the second "vision," Baltin asks, "Do you think this is the only world?" and in doing so, defines the play as a whole. In the end, the play's answer to this question is a resounding "no." The incorporation of dreams and their inseparability from reality force us to realize the many possibilities for change and reconnection with those whom we had thought lost. Wallace's play raises important questions, but also successfully offers solutions in a performance that creates human connections across seemingly impenetrable borders.
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Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the actor who played Ali. The actor's name is actually spelled Ibrahim Miari.
