Usually, a play needs actors to bring it to life. But Alexis Zegerman’s latest leaps off the page, so vivid is the writing. Set in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, its subject is the high-achieving Myers family (above), the intimidating patriarch of which is Professor Richard Myers, played by Robert Lindsay.

He is a world leading pioneer of IVF treatment and the family is gathering to celebrate his forthcoming lifetime achievement award. Yet there is a dark side to such success and The Fever Syndrome explores how a family is affected by such a domineering figure.

The play is full of the argument and energy you might expect from, to use Zegerman’s description, “a high-functioning dysfunctional” American family. The work claims a place in the pantheon of ambitious family dramas from that country such as Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County or Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide To Capitalism and Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures, which received its European première at Hampstead Theatre.

Playwright

Playwright Alexis Zegerman

Zegerman’s, originally a commission from the Manhattan Theatre Club, is a world première. All that is needed is for the play’s director (Hampstead’s Roxana Silbert) to transfer the dynamism of what is on the page to the stage. No pressure.

“I obviously walk in the shadow of giants,” says Zegerman when we meet during a break in rehearsals. “[I’m] daring to write a play within a genre founded by male playwrights. So I tread softly but bravely. Women should be allowed to do it and do it differently.”

Zegerman is also an actor, though less so these days. Her most recent role was in Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt.
What is so striking about The Fever Syndrome is how authentically American it feels. “The Manhattan Theatre Club did a reading of it with with American actors and I think if there had been any phoniness in there they would have been on to it,” she says. It helps that her journalist husband, Peter Graff, is American.

“My family [in the play] very much echoes my husband’s family in New York,” she says. “And our kids are American, my stepfather is American and I very much feel that the running commentary in my head is my mother-in-law’s outer borough New York accent. So I feel very comfortable writing with those voices.”

This connection allows Zegerman to write with what she calls the “front-footed” energy that feels natural to her. “I think it comes from being Jewish, shall we say, or an immigrant. I’m not an immigrant myself, but obviously I am very much of immigrant stock. It seems very ‘other’ here in the UK, and in America it just isn’t because it’s not just Jewish there, it’s [a result of] all the immigration that has built America.”

Thematically the new play also touches on attitudes towards science — a subject as pertinent as it is possible to be in the wake of a pandemic. But it does this within a family gathering in one household.

“Micro drama can have macro things to say about the world,” says Zegerman. “Arthur Miller is often about the American dream. Sam Shepard is about disappointment in American politics. The way that science and scientists get deified and vilified in society was something that I really wanted to look at.”

And then there is the more personal narrative of a family overshadowed by one huge reputation.

“I know great men in various fields,” says Zegerman. “They share traits and I have seen the fallout of having brilliant patriarchs at the helm of family and the effect on their children. I thought that was a really interesting, thrilling character to have on stage.”

The culture and energy with which Zegerman wrote the play is also connected to her recent decision to apply for German (and therefore EU) citizenship — her grandmother escaped Germany in the 30s.

“Obviously, Brexit was a factor. I felt that something hugely important came out of World War Two. The need for unification had been taken away from us. All of that building bridges that had been done, the freedom of movement, which let’s face it for Jews, is really important. I think it’s in our heritage, in our DNA.”

The Fever Syndrome is at Hampstead until April 30. hampsteadtheatre.com