ajhlovestheatre

CROCODILE FEVER

by Meghan Tyler

directed by Mehmet Ergen

Arcola Theatre, London – until 22 November 2025

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/crocodilefever/

If you can imagine a female-centric Northern Irish take on Sam Shepard or early Tracy Letts, add a splatter of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros and trace a rich, bloody vein back to the gorefests of Jacobean revenge tragedy, and you’ll have some idea of Meghan Tyler’s thrilling play, previously seen at the Edinburgh Festival in 2019. Crocodile Fever, in a note-perfect, full throttle staging by the Arcola’s artistic director Mehmet Ergen, is packed with surprises (some of them deeply unpleasant), jet black humour and, perhaps most impressively, a razor sharp clarity of vision and willingness to march into territory that fainter hearted theatre makers might blanch at. 

It’s the 1980s and two sisters from rural County Armagh have dealt with the tragic but suspicious death of their mother and the decades-long reign of terror by their misogynistic bully of a father, in markedly different ways. Alannah (Rachael Rooney) has become a recluse in the family home, caring for her now severely disabled but still vile father and developing chronic OCD, while Fianna (Tyler, as exciting an actor as they are a writer) joined the IRA and has done time in prison. Fianna’s return (via a broken window, naturally) throws Alannah into a complete tailspin. 

It’s great fun watching wild Fianna pushing (apparently) strait laced Alannah’s buttons, and the pugnacious dynamic between the siblings is brilliantly realised. Meanwhile their bed-bound father (Stephen Kennedy), now unable to use his legs thanks to a run-in with British soldiers, rumbles overhead. The staircase in Merve Yörük’s nicely kitschy farmhouse set suggests that he will make an appearance at some point, and when he does, it’s quite a moment. Kennedy is gloriously, repellently vivid.

The first act is biliously funny but also succeeds in achieving a real, palpable sense of danger. Remarkably, it also has moments that are genuinely touching as Fianna and Alannah try to reconnect over remembered pop tunes and phenomenally strong drinks. Tyler is like a firecracker in human form, and Rooney, although a trifle over-emphatic at first, finds colours and layers in Alannah’s issues and defensiveness that feel authentic. These performances sizzle.

If act one is a riot, the even more visceral but less satisfactory second half really snaps the tether. Nothing quite prepares you for what’s to come but Tyler seems to be making valid, if not particularly original, points about women being the repeated victims of war and male aggression, and that the capacity for female rage is infinite. No spoilers here but suffice it to say you may not be able to believe your eyes and ears. If it strays into the preposterous, it does, ultimately, feel of apiece with what we’ve seen before, and it’s technically astonishing (special mentions are due to puppet designer Rachael Canning, and the lighting and sound contributions of Richard Williamson and Benjamin Grant respectively). 

Powered by vengeful rage, 80s bangers, industrial quantities of booze, Taytos (yes, the Irish brand of potato crisps) and a chainsaw, Crocodile Fever (the title will make sense when you watch the play) is essential viewing if you want to see a playwright giving a two fingered salute to the limits of imagination, but with potty-mouthed wit and theatrical panache. It isn’t perfect, and it’s certainly not for the faint-of-heart but it makes a lot other plays currently on offer seem awfully safe. As an impressed but bewildered Fianna says of Alannah’s hilariously eccentric analysis of ‘Africa’, the Toto hit single from 1982 and one of the songs the sisters bond over, “that’s genius, I mean, it’s mental but it’s genius”. Well, quite.