Fuddy Meers is a farce, of course. Few other genres could contain such broad strokes of action and weirdness. Our heroine, Claire (Catherine Smith), has psychogenic amnesia (amnesia caused by a severe psychological trauma), and as if that weren’t inconvenience enough, she can’t keep new memories past bedtime — she wakes with no memory of the past day’s events. Each morning, her life is duly explained to her by her attentive husband, Richard, who knows he can be brutally honest about how annoying he finds her condition - the next day, she'll just forget. He’s lovingly prepared a book for her, with pictures and descriptions, to guide her through the day.

The audience eagerly awaits the plot implications of such a contrived illness, and our wait is short — moments after Claire wakes, a lisping, limping stranger in a ski mask slides out from under her bed and informs her that the man who claimed to be her husband is in fact a dangerous criminal, and that Claire is in need of rescue. Claire has no way of verifying the intruder’s claim, and, hoping for the best, she “escapes” with him, and down the rabbit hole we go...

Smith, with her fair skin, light eyes, and blonde hair, at times was washed out enough under the stage lights, but nonetheless exuded innocent and cheery acceptance of her bizarre circumstances — Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm lost on the grounds of an insane asylum. Her Claire is all goofy ingénue in pink bedroom slippers, meeting strange characters and stranger situations with sunny aplomb.

Mark Scarboro as Richard, the man who may or may not be Claire’s husband, steals almost every scene he’s in with his bullseye timing and jerky charm. Playing a hyper and slightly hysterical suburban dad (think The Simpsons’ Ned Flanders on crack), he has all the best lines and delivers them with demented flair. His interpretation of a stressed-out dad on a mission to retrieve his escaped wife inspires the biggest laughs of the show.

Tommi Jones plays Claire’s mom, Gertie, a woman whose stroke has changed her speech a garbled, childlike secret language Claire calls “stroke talk” — breakfast becomes “fassbreak”, and funny mirrors become the “fuddy meers” of the title. With her earnest face and straightforward delivery, the de-glammed, shuffling, curlers-crowned Jones makes Gertie so sympathetic and strong of backbone that her speech impediment is never insulting, just funny. People with such afflictions often have a slight disdain for those who can’t speak their private lingo — Jones catches just that touch of the patient condescension of someone who can’t possibly imagine why she’s not being understood.

Mark Sutton as Millet, the sock-puppet wearing helper of Claire’s abductor/rescuer, is also fun to watch. He has a real talent for children’s show-style puppet voices, which just makes his puppet “Hinky Binky’s” constant profanities that much funnier. Millet’s demented insistence that Hinky Binky is a living being in need of medical attention due to a “stab wound” adds irresistible farcical silliness to the second act.

If only the whole production had the appeal of its best performances. Claire’s actions make sense, but only because she has no history and nowhere to go save where the day takes her. But as the real reason behind her abduction is made clear, the audience detaches from caring about much of anything onstage. Farce must by definition be idiotic, must strain our perception of reality to the limit, but once it passes a certain level of credibility, an inner silent alarm is tripped. We can’t care about a relationship between characters who don’t believably connect, or about motivations so utterly nonsensical they strain past the physics of farce and reduce us to detached puzzlement. We can sense Gertie’s love for Claire (and even Millet’s love for Hinky Binky), but though numerous other powerful emotional connections are enacted onstage, no other ties really convince.

The action takes place on two halves of the stage - while something important takes place in one half, lights on the other half dim and the actors seem to slip into a twilight zone of zombielike, desultory action. Two characters have a confrontation stage right; meanwhile in stage left, the actors seem to perform a stiff and wordless ballet of impromptu actions, moving slowly, almost as if underwater, remaining vaguely in character as they await their cue to again become the main focus. Director April Jones highlights the play’s manic disjointedness, guiding her actors into choices that emphasize the play’s schizophrenic multiple identities, instead of Fuddy Meers’ genuine funniness and redemptive storyline. Smith particularly, saddled with constant “revelation monologues” in which her character’s past comes back to her, falls victim to slotting into an identical tear-in-her-voice delivery for every single revelation. The ending, particularly, is a listless whimper rather than a bang - I can’t imagine that people who just went through what these characters went through could journey into the sunset so airily.

Much of Chip Decker’s set, including the chairs, walls, and kitchen cabinets, is painted the black of negative space, and the oven and fridge in Gertie’s kitchen have a chunk cut away with surgical precision, as if you’re looking at a showroom model that shows the layers of a stove or fridge — the shiny painted outer layer, the insulation, the workings and wires…. This set concept is genuinely interesting but too busy for the mad action of the play. I am reminded of the actor Kenneth Branagh’s realization that he could not possibly play Laertes as mad, as Hamlet feigns madness, and Ophelia goes mad… There’s enough madness in Hamlet without Laertes’ contribution, thank you very much. The world of Fuddy Meers is mad and deformed enough without a set that so plainly represents Claire’s missing memory and her bizarre and uncertain world. This is a great idea writ too large, and while I can’t imagine how the construction team sawed through an oven, I found this design numbingly obvious. The undercurrent of serious reflection that flows through Fuddy might have been better served by a set that enhanced the play’s odd angles rather than one that vied for attention better given to the actors and the plot.

One thing I did love about Fuddy Meers, aside from some great comedic performances, was the music playing in the house before show began, all of which mentioned memory and the loss of memory (e.g., Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me”) - a wonderful small touch that made me smile. Not all of Fuddy is so entertaining as the clever music, but the play has its moments. I wouldn’t classify it as forgettable, but like the set, it’s seriously missing something.

Jennifer Saylor, May 31, 2002