Every so often a little gem of a production appears on stage in a Wellington theatre which is the case with the latest play opening at BATS – Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire. 

While this quirky, off-beat awarding American play has a lot going for it with its bizarre twists and turns it is the actual production of Words On Trees Co-operative under the direction of Alison Walls that is the star of the night. 

Ingeniously using the expertise of AV company Spyglass, designer Hannah Smith has created a wonderfully innovative set of moving images to portraying the inner world and turmoil of the central character Clare. 

What appears to be a normal morning for Clare (Georginia Taylor), waking up to the sound of her alarm clock, turns out like every other day, a blank slate trying to remember details of her life. She has a rare condition of memory loss – psychogenic amnesia. Her up-beat husband (or is he?) Richard (Alex Greig) and stoned son Kenny (Nathan Mudge) go through the daily ritual of trying to help her to remember. 

Then arrives Limping Man (Francis Biggs) who also has a lisp and a mutilated ear who kidnaps Clare and takes her to a house where she meets stroke victim Gertie (Emma Kinane), who has a speech-impediment and who may also be her mother.

In the house as well is Millet (Carl Hayes), a half witted thug with a foul-mouthed hand puppet. Richard and Kenny eventually track Clare down in the house but not before an altercation with an aggressive women Heidi (Pheobe Smith) who may or may not be the policewomen she says she is. 

From here hilarity and mayhem ensure as the plot unravels until it is revealed who Clare is and how these manic characters fit into her life. While on the one level this whacky play has all the hallmarks of another absurdist American comedy in similar vein to those of Christopher Durang, it also has many threads and themes running through it about dysfunctional families, abusive husbands and how women are lead on by men.

Word play is also the essence of the script, Clare likes search-a-word puzzles and is always looking for the names of things in her world of doubt and uncertainty. And the title Fuddy Meers, from one of stroke victim Gerites “stroke talk” is a vital clue to the unravelling of the plot.

However to make all this work the actors need loads of energy and the ability to fire of the dialogue with assured confidence which, in this production, without exception, every actor does. They play the comedy to the hilt with an amazing amount of physicality without ever overdoing it or losing sight of the underlying ideas making this a highly entertaining must-see production.
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Every morning when Clare wakes up she has no idea who she is, where she is or who the people around her are. Her husband Richard – whom she keeps calling Phillip without knowing why – has to explain all over again about the psychogenic amnesia she has suffered for the past two years. He has now prepared a book-of-her-life that tells her the essentials … or does it?

No-one or thing is really as they seem – which is the point of the title (of which more anon). Director Alison Walls has assembled an excellent cast and maintained dynamic pacing throughout the multi-location sequence of scenes in Hannah Smith’s three-screened set, upon which somewhat animated settings are projected (designed by Julie Jeon, Mike Peters and Steffen Kreft, of AV company Spyglass).

The decision to maintain the American setting while using the actors’ own Kiwi voices is a good one, in that character delineation is not overshadowed by try-hard accents yet we are not deluded into thinking this is our culture. It connects us to the parallels in our own world by making it less easy to write it off as ‘them’, not us (or the US, not us).  

Georgiana Taylor captures the essence of Clare’s blank slate bemusement, wonderment, anticipation and core-value sense of judgement superbly. The absolute credibility she brings to her predicament compels us to engage with her journey no matter how extraordinary the action becomes – which it does.  

Her present husband, Richard, is played with loving ebullience by Alex Greig; the loudness of his upbeat energy betraying an unexpected nature and life history. Nathan Mudge is splendidly self-absorbed, by way of self-defence, as their stoner teenage son, Kenny.

Designated the ‘Limping Man’ who also lisps and is half deaf, Francis Biggs runs an extraordinary gamut of moods and emotions as he keeps us guessing who he is, what he is up to and why.

Millet, the mate to whom he was joined at the wrist, has a glove puppet on the other hand, is given raucous voice by Carl Haynes. His energetic performance and vocals could be significantly modulated for our better understanding. (Although the play is about distortion, clarity in what the puppet says is crucial, since – as I have discovered from further research – much essential, plot-grounding information is imparted by it.)

When Clare is saved-cum-abducted by the Limping Man, Richard and Kenny give chase – all done in simply evoked vehicles on a projected highway flanked by bare plains – and en-route Phoebe Smith’s stroppy cop, Heidi, stops them. And she too torns out to be other that what meets the eye.  

It is when Clare gets home to her mother, Gertie, and the old childhood home that bits of her past come back. But Gertie has had a stroke and her resultant dysphasia makes her mangle sentences and words something chronic. Yet thanks to an extremely intelligent and emotionally true performance by Emma Kinane, Clare soon comes to get the gist of her utterances, and so do we.

Gertie is the one who mentions the “fuddy meers” you get at fun parks – you know, the ‘funny mirrors’ that distort your image in weird and whacky ways? – which pretty well sums up what playwright David Lindsay-Abaire has done to each character.

What emerges, as I see it anyway, is a searing satire of modern marriage and family life as distorted by domestic abuse – physical and mental – perpetrated by control-freak husbands. To say it finally packs a punch amid the mayhem would be an unfortunate turn of phrase.

To say it is also about the proverbial frying pan, fats and fire would not be fatuous. Lindsay-Abaire’s strategy of using comedy this way reminds me somewhat of the works of Dario Fo and Franca Rame.

Left with the question of whether salvation has been achieved or the whole cycle of abuse will be repeated ad infinitum, we can do worse than contemplate what it might take to change things for the better. The play does not wear its message on its proverbial sleeve but in rising to its considerable challenges this production renders each beat with such compelling truth that we cannot help but consider its deeper implications.

On opening night at Bats I sensed the audience was strongly engaged and our sustained applause indicated we knew we had been in the presence of something special. Fuddy Meers holds its distorting mirrors up to aspects of life we cannot ignore.
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