Crocodile Fever sounds like an infectious virus rather than a play. Its plot – the revenge of two sisters on their abusive father – moves towards the same end: an inert victim and the serious need for medical assistance. When it was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, the Guardian called it a ‘dark comedy’. Really, though, it belongs in the twilight zone of feminist horror, where a patriarch’s bunions are boiled rather than bunnies, as in Fatal Attraction.
From the beginning, writer Meghan Taylor lets us know something is amiss. It’s the 1980s in South Armagh, Ireland. The Troubles are raging on, yet we find ourselves inside an eerily tranquil country cottage. Presided over by older sister Alannah, a zealous Catholic and committed Daddy’s girl, the surfaces of the sugar-pink kitchen are sparkling clean, and there’s a comforting sense of order. Commotion begins, however, when Fianna, the wayward younger sister who loves rock cassette tapes and salty talk, returns home to find that her tyrannical father is still alive. She’s spent eight years behind bars and has picked up a little bit of inspiration from the felons. Citing the authority of the mystical Asmat tribe, she concludes the only way to deal with evil, reptilian vermin like her father is to ‘Snatch them’ and ‘Gobble them up’. What ensues is wild, fantastical, devastating, surreal and very, very bloody.
Imaginative flights in the play are brilliantly tempered by psychologically penetrating performances. Rachel Rooney’s Alannah is pious, prim and comically pernickety about how G&Ts should be made (decorative slices of cucumber and apple are a must). She moves with all the stiffness of a plastic doll from Toys R Us, the result of all her repressed emotion. By contrast, Fianna, played by Meghan Taylor, is a tornado of irreverence. She sprawls her body and belongings over the stage, smashing windows and popping open packets of Tayto crisps. She deals with childhood trauma by letting rip and reaching for a chainsaw. In the end, both prove themselves kin and partake in cathartic acts of violence, but this is hardly a solution to patriarchal abuse. It simply reiterates the fact that blood will have blood and leaves one feeling the play could have probed its subject matter further.
The titular crocodile of the show Da (performed by Stephen Kennedy) is deliciously nefarious. He enters the stage wounded, slithering in on his belly like a crocodile edging towards its prey. Every time he opens his mouth, you’re left wondering whether he’s going to utter soft, coercive words that can be used for manipulation, or release another round of misogynistic invective.
Yes, the plot of Crocodile Fever may hinge on a gimmicky piece of arcane knowledge, but the show’s pacing is rapid and engaging. Taylor knows how to let revelations build characters and make them into real people with real pasts. In one of the play’s more digressive scenes, Alannah delivers a zany interpretation of the 1980s synth-pop hit Africa by Toto, exposing her teeming inner-life.
In Crocodile Fever, Meghan Tyler has written Titus Andronicus for girls – it’s got gore, dismemberment, and explores the dynamics of a dysfunctional family. South Armagh certainly makes for a wilderness of crocodiles (just wait until you see the play’s Ovidian finale). Yet at the risk of sounding like Mary Whitehouse, I did want a clear moral to send me on my way. The best that could be mustered was ‘It won’t be fucking easy; it never fucking is’, as the sisters declare at the play’s end. Self-evident, perhaps, but a testament to the fact that Stoics are made from encounters with crocodiles.
Crocodile Fever
By Meghan Tyler
Director: Mehmet Ergen
Photo credits: Ikin Yum
Cast includes: Meghan Tyler; Rachael Rooney; Stephen Kennedy; James Pedley-Holden.
Until: Saturday 22nd November 2025
Running Time: 2 hours including a 15-minute interval
Review by Olivia Hurton