Customer Reviews

Fuddy Meers - Acting Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the funniest and most touching plays I've read in a long time. I only wish I could've seen it performed in New York. It's off-the-wall silly, and then suddenly becomes surprisingly poignant and real. A very unique play, hard to categorize, but so worth the read. I really enjoyed it.

This script keeps you on the edge of your seat--each line is a new discovery. The characters are touching, well-defined, and certainly amusing, and through them Lindsay-Abaire explores humanity with much insight. After reading, I can't help but imagine all the potential this script has to become a great production.

These days playwright David Lindsay-Abaire is best known for his 2007 Pulitizer Prize-winning play RABBIT HOLE--but before that play he was widely recognized as the author of FUDDY MEERS, a semi-absurdist peopled with zany characters acting out a zanny plot. The play opened in New York in 1999 to mostly positive reviews and proved an audience favorite; it was soon a popular ticket around the country; and it won many awards along the way. None of this, however, prevents FUDDY MEERS from being one of the most relentlessly unfunny comedies I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

The story, such as it is, focuses on Claire--a woman who suffers from a rare form of psychogenic amnesia. Each morning she awakens without the faintest idea of who she is or where she is, and over the years her husband Richard has prepared a book for her use, a book that tells her name, where her slippers are, that she likes coffee, and so on. This morning is like any other--until to two unexpected things occur. Claire asks what caused her amnesia, a question she has never posed before. Then, when her husband is in the shower, a man crawls out from under her bed and tells Claire that he is brother Zack and he has come to rescue from her abusive husband Richard. Zack induces Claire to run away with him to mother Gertie's house, where Claire will be safe.

Zack has an outlandish speech impediment; he has a limp; and we also discover that his ear is almost burt off and much of his face is scarred. When they arrive at mother Gertie's, they discover she is in little better condition: she has had a stroke, and although her cognitive abilities are unimpaired, she suffers from aphasia--a stroke symptom in which the patient is prone to "word salads," using a mixture of wrong words and nonsense words when she tries to speak. What with Zack's speech impediment and Gertie's aspasia, the script quickly develops a feel that is akin to a cross between Alice and Wonderland and A Clockwork Orange, and the arrival of Zack's friend Millett (who has a hand puppet given to spouting naughty words) hardly helps matters. But fortunately, Frank and Claire's son are on the way--having paused to kidnap a policewoman who pulled them over for speeding--and soon everyone arrives at Gertie's house and begins to argue about identity. Is Zack really Claire's brother? Is Frank really Claire's husband. Exactly who is this becrazed, hand-puppet weidling man, and what is the strange police woman really up to?

The description sounds intriguing, funny, maybe even laugh-out-loud hilarious. Well, it isn't. For one thing, there are only two likeable characters in the play--Claire and Gertie, and of course you can't understand a word Gertie says. The language, and the way Lindsay-Abaire uses it, becomes increasingly frustrating as the play progresses, and when the truth is exposed it doesn't seem to be to any actually point. We really don't find out what happens to Zack, Millet and his puppet, or the becrazed policewoman. Does Gertie regain control of her language? No. Is Claire cured of her amnesia? There's a faint suggestion that she might, but nothing more. And so it ends.

FUDDY MEERS is frequently described as "absurdist," but this isn't the absurdism you'd expect of Sartre, Genet, Ionesco, and the other great writers who worked in that genre. No, this is just situation comedy with stock characters and weird things thrown in that we're supposed to find funny, and none of it has any actual point, philosophical or otherwise. The play doesn't end so much as simply stops, and that's that. Now, it is true that playscripts are not really intended to be read by the general public--a play is intended to be seen on the stage, and a play that reads badly often plays extremely well. But in spite of its popularity, I can't help but feel that this isn't the case with FUDDY MEERS. It just isn't funny. Indeed, it is relentlessly unfunny. I would even go so far as to say that it is vile beyond description. Go see a production if you must, but don't expect too much--and stay as far away from the script as you can get.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

The play is very funny and an easy read. I laughed out loud. The quality of the book was nearly new and I received the play in just a few days.

I was extremely pleased when i saw the package come. I was not expecting it so soon. It was a definite plus! :)

More beautiful, whimsical, touching, absurdist fare from David Lindsay-Abaire--in the vein of another terrific young playwright, Napoleon Ellsworth. It seems as though these two writers (along w/ perhaps Padriac Duffy) are spearheading a revolt against the dead, naturalistic world of theater. And it couldn't've happened a moment too soon! BRAVO!

I hadn't read anything else by this author and I wasn't sure what to make of the descriptions I read but after receiving the play and giving it a read I knew I was going to want to direct or be in this show. It does read a little clunky at times and it feels as though the speaking traits of a couple of the characters may wear thin but that doesn't happen. I'd suggest getting some friends together and having a read through. That's what we did and we had a blast. The story is complex but not very deep. I can't say that this is a show that will answer any questions of the universe for you but I bet you will enjoy the ride.

This is a fun play, with several very creative and funny components that keep this from being a standard series of "ah ha's". Definitely a fun night at the theatre and also a fun read. Without giving anything away, this is about a woman whose life is skewed and the necessary occurances that bring it back into perspective for her, and us too. Featuring an imposter-brother, a foul-mouthed pot-smoking kid, an almost-schizophrenic husband, a tongue-tied stroke-victim grandma, and a not-too-bright schizophrenic puppeteer-kidnapper. Yes, all of them and more make Fuddy Meers a good, creative, enjoyable time.

"Fuddy Meers", there's no denying, is a vastly diverting stage piece, but upon reflection, except for its perception that amnesia may be the American drug of choice, it's pretty void of meaning. Yet at its premiere, its author was unduly proclaimed a playwright of genius for merely demonstrating considerable skill in stagewriting. Happily, Lindsay-Abaire comes into his own, fulfilling his promise in his most recent work, "Kimberly Akimbo," which does to the contemporary American family what perhaps should be done to the contemporary American family. Existing outside of time or history, devoted to adolescent board games, SUV's, Frosted Flakes, and wished-for visits to kiddy theme parks, the family is presented as a collection of unwittingly solitary individuals who maintain for as long as possible the pretense of "caring" for one another. The heroine of this work, a kind of maimed Nora from "A Doll's House," hilariously and movingly finds she too at the end must walk out (though here accompanied by a geeky boyfriend) if only to an uncertain and precarious future. The "comic genius" said to be in evidence in "Fuddy Meers" is in fact clearly and happily realized in this work, which just received its world premiere at South Coast Rep in Southern California.