Programme Note #1: Fuddy Meers
JH writes “Welcome! Hello, and a warm welcome to the Barn Theatre!
Fuddy Meers was an unlikely find at a discount bookstore when I was a teenager, and almost 15 years later, I’ve never had the chance to see a production.
I’ve always been fascinated about stories featuring memory loss, perhaps due to my grandmother’s dementia. The fragility of the brain as the gatekeeper to our past, our history, and our memories is fascinating.
However, most stories about memory loss feature a male protagonist. Fuddy Meers is a kaleidoscopic world of uniquely bizarre characters, but at the centre is Claire, a gentle yet strong-willed woman filled with curiosity and determination to learn her truth.
This play is an unforgettable story about a woman who can’t remember hers. It is also has a lot of my favourite things: solving puzzles, jokes at inappropriate moments, and puppets.
For my directorial debut, I feel incredibly grateful to the creatives who’ve helped me tell Claire’s story. My Texas-sized thanks to my immensely talented cast, who found Claire’s world as captivating as I do. Thank you to the equally brilliant crew for their hard work (and patience). A special thanks to Tony Brownings, my producer, whose support never wavered despite my increasingly outlandish ideas.
And finally, to Adam and Maggie, for my happiest memories.
Review #1:
Publication: NODA
Publication Data: March 13 2024
Reviewer: Kay Rowan
Text Header: Fuddy Meers – Based on the play by David Lindsay Abaire
Text: Content”Fuddy Meers – Based on the play by David Lindsay Abaire. A fascinating play full of incomprehensible speech, even more incomprehensible actions, various levels of understanding with so many interwoven descriptions of events. Claire, who awakens each morning as a blank slate on which her husband and teenage son must imprint the facts of her life. One morning she is abducted by a limping, lisping man who claims her husband wants to kill her. His friend has a glove puppet with which he communicates frequently in language that is shocking. Nothing and no one are what you initially think is the truth.
The set was multi-functional and utilised two levels. From Claire’s bedroom to the kitchen of her mother, Gertie. The mobile cars and their journeys were very effective particularly the glaring headlights. The cellar including the workshop was set in front of the stage and was very well kitted out with all the detritus you find in such places. Well done the props people. This is always one of the strengths of Wick Theatre Company. Creative, effective and efficient throughout as one has come to expect. With a play set in America at the turn of the century it is always easy to forget the nuances of each period. Not this team. Typical zip up cardigans and leather jackets maintained the illusion of the time.
To quote “A sinister and zany comedic romp with a dark domestic drama at its heart, Fuddy Meers illustrates a world in which nothing is as it seems, hardly anyone can be understood, and trusting the wrong person can get you locked in the basement with a foul-mouthed sock puppet, hit over the head with a frying pan, or hauled over the Canadian border.” Well, that was what I was expecting, and I must confess I was a little apprehensive, but I loved it from start to finish. – the humour, the rapport of the cast, the sensitivity…… In order to achieve the consistent high level of emotion and standard of performance the cast must have worked exceedingly hard. There wasn’t a single weak link everyone performed their part with consummate professionalism. Great credit should be attached to director, Jacqueline Harper, who very bravely took on this complex play for her directorial debut.
Quality performances are the norm with this very talented society who are always prepared to tackle the unusual with great enthusiasm.”
Review #2:
Publication: Brighton Source
Publication Data: March 20 2024 – on-line
Reviewer: Mike Aiken
Text Header: Fuddy Meers
Text: Content
“Still crazy after all these years? That could be the sub-title for a play that is wrapped in complex, dramatic and entertaining episodes while retaining elements of both the serious and the silly.
Jacqueline Harper, who directed this production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s play – first performed in 1999 – has managed to include the suitably crazy aspects. These are then set alongside an exploration of a woman’s serious ‘psychogenic’ amnesia following a stroke. So Claire (Nicola Russel) starts every single day with a blank. Who is she, where is she, who are these other people, and where are her children?
The ever awkward, and slightly academic, Richard (Giles Newlyn-Bowmer), who works in a hospital, has compiled a book all about Claire’s past. So now he will not need to repeat her life story every morning. She ‘re-discovers’ Richard as her married partner and learns that they have a son, Kenny (Ethan Dryer).
But Kenny has teenage ‘issues’ and starts combing the freeways with his mates. Pretty soon, he’s in trouble with the cops. Or are they fake cops? Yep, it gets complicated!
Meanwhile, another woman, Gertie (Susanne Crosby), has suffered a stroke. But she can still punch well above her weight.
Pretty soon, in this melee, everything – and everyone – gets ever more crazy. The cops want to press charges on the teenagers’ reckless driving. ‘We clocked you doing 84 in a 50 limit.’ But are the police really cops? And can’t they smell the marijuana?
There are knives and guns. Dogs are barking. An old man holds up an orange puppet which then starts to speak. But are there any ghosts around? There’s a packet of cornflakes on the fridge. There’s some music in the background. Someone likes the Rolling Stones.
That delightful slurring accent of ‘Funny Mirror’ soon turns into ‘Fuddy Meers’ (and hence the title of the play). Meanwhile, the props – including the house and the car – are delightfully and appropriately ridiculous.
Things don’t stop getting ever more crazy. A limping, lisping man, Zach (Dan Dryer), crawls out from under Gertie’s bed. He reckons he used to be Claire’s husband.
Who is pretending to do what and to whom? Sometimes one identity is not what it seems. One man says he had burnt the house down. But he claims he has had counselling since then. After all, as one of the characters admits: surely there’s good and bad in all people, isn’t there?
The audience need to work hard and listen close up. You could call it post-modern. The characters are not always fixed or predictable. In places, even the puppets start talking.
Fuddy Meers is no easy play to bring to the stage. Written by David Lindsay-Abaire (a Pulitzer prize winner in 2007) this production by Tony Brownings has crafted a suitable backdrop to the performance. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Harper’s direction of Fuddy has brought together both the serious and the silly amidst characters’ shifting memories and identities.
