[star rating = 4/5 stars]
WITH a visual colour scheme which is as aggressively pink as the writing is, well, just aggressive, Crocodile Fever is a blacker-than-black comedy which scoops you up in its jaws and refuses to let go.
The play tells a delightfully bonkers story of two sisters reuniting after an eleven year separation following a family tragedy. Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 1980s, we are introduced to timid Alannah as she cleans every inch of her already immaculate kitchen with a toothbrush.
She is quickly forced out of her nunnish existence of secretive emotional eating and smoking when her wild younger sister Fianna bursts back into her life after a stint in prison and a few years spent working for the IRA.
Then follows a storm of tears, recriminations and large quantities of alcohol before arriving at the jaw-dropping finale.
Gareth Nicholls’ slick, stylish production of Megan Tyler’s play has been greeted with sold-out performances since it opened in Edinburgh.
The expensive set and costuming feels like a canvas on which the two actresses can act out the sisters’ complicated relationship with each other and with other members of their family. And that’s not just because it ends up smeared with blood and crisps.
Lucianne McEvoy is hilarious and pathetic by turns as the highly-strung Alannah. Although Lisa Dwyer Hogg as forceof nature, Fianna undoubtedly has the best lines of the two, it is McEvoy who can wring laughs from the audience with nothing more than a well-timed twitch.
The two work well together and manage to keep the energy going despite occasional lulls in the action. By the end of the show I found myself wishing for a sequel where we get to see more of their sweary, chainsaw-wielding antics.
This roller-coaster ride of a play is what you would get if you crossed a Martin McDonagh film with Derry Girls and threw in a dash of bizarre horror taken from Ken Russell’s Lair of the White Worm for good measure.
Audiences will have a blast watching these fun, fiery women out to settle scores in their own unique way.
