kapFUDDYMEERS

Fuddy Meers

My experience with the play “Fuddy Meers” was an enjoyable one. The audience was enjoying itself: believing what the actors were saying, keeping quiet, and laughing along with the play. The play flowed well and was easy to understand. I especially liked that it began humorously then slowly transferred into the horror of domestic violence. It was a scary moment when Kenny started to beat up his father for throwing his mother to the ground, because it showed how children can become like their parents. Another part of the plot that I liked was the continued mentioning of someone named Phillip. About the third time I finally realized that Phillip was probably “Zach” from his jumpiness at the name. It felt like I was putting together the puzzle of Claire’s life just as she was. The name of the play “Fuddy Meers” turned out to be “stroke talk” for “funny mirrors” in reference to fun house mirrors that warp and stretch images. Literally, the Limping Man’s face was distorted from terrible burns, but he also distorted the truth by lying to Claire. First he claims to be Zach, her brother who died when he was a young boy. Then, he tells her that Richard was physically abusing her when it was actually him. He tries to pretend that he is a changed man when in reality he is lying to everyone- he never has any intention of leaving Claire with Gertie like he tells Millet or being in a relationship with Heidi. The Limping Man needed Millet to go along with him because they were hand cuffed together and he needed Heidi to break him out of jail. Another sad and twisted aspect of the play comes to light towards the end of the play when Richard talks about stealing a ring from a woman and then proposing to Claire with it. The ring is the same as the one that Millet had previously seen on Claire’s hand; the ring he was accused of stealing. Luckily Millet gets justice for himself by taking the ring from Claire and going to return it to its rightful owner and clear his name. Another theme in the play is the men’s need to forget their past. Phillip wants Claire to forget about the abuse, arson, and bacon grease; and to run away with him. Technically, she has forgotten, but he cannot keep his true nature away from her when she rejects him. Richard is also trying to run away from his troublesome past when he did drugs and robbed people. Claire is the perfect escape for him because her memory resets every day so even if she realizes what he has done one day, she will not remember the next. In the end, Richard is able to run away from his past, while Phillip is stuck in it.

The stage set up really impressed me. With such a small stage, the scene designers had to find some way to deal with the constant set changes, which they did by implementing a large, rotating platform which had three sets on it. One set was a kitchen filled with bright yellow appliances that contrasted with the bright blue walls and gray tile floor. On the walls were wedding pictures and pictures of a young family. The wedding pictures were significant because Claire had been married twice, and the family pictures relate to the Limping Man because he claims to be Claire’s brother, who has long been dead. Above the sink was a window that looked outside to a green area. The neat thing about the window was that there was space in between that set and the one on the other side for several people to fit. The effect of people coming to the window was funny because they often snuck up on the people within the house. For instance, when Millet first comes to the window talking through his sock puppet it was a shock factor. The puppet was cussing and being nasty to Gertie and Claire and even to Millet himself. The other side was the basement of Gertie’s house and in between the two were 4 car seats. I liked this representation of them being a car, especially when they started throwing things out which just landed in a basket in the back of the little set.

The period was modern day which was evident by the son Kenny smoking marijuana and the son’s clothes; however, Claire’s green dress and Richard’s and Gertie’s clothes were more old-fashioned. Claire mostly wore pajamas through the first half of the play. To me this showed the hurried state of affairs because there was no time for her to even change! By the end she was dressed in a green dress and heels. Richard was dressed in preppy clothes- a collared shirted with a sweater vest and dress pants- to add to his sunny and supposedly straight edge persona. By the end of the play we learn that his dress is more to illustrate the person he wants to be after his sordid past. The troubled son wore dark colored jeans, a dark shirt with a hooded jacket and let his hair fall over his eyes; exactly what the kids in my high school who smoked pot wore. Gertie wore the usual elderly woman clothes: orthopedic shoes, glasses with a chain around her head, loose pants, shirt, and jacket with short, gray, curly hair. Her clothes plus a good make-up job made her look sufficiently old. The Limping Man had an interesting facial wound that was supposed to be caused by bacon grease being poured in his ear. It looked more like raw bacon to me than a healed burn. I initially thought he did not like bacon because his face looked like bacon not because of the grease. He wore jeans and a polo making him look comfortable. In the first scene he wore a mask with many different colors showing the need to distract from his horrible face deformity. He also had half a hand cuff on when he came out from under the bed which was the first sign that there was something wrong with him. When Millet appears, he has on the companion hand cuff and the same Velcro shoes as the Limping Man. This similarity further indicated that something was wrong in the beginning of the play. Millet was an odd ball character who wore a tan suit with mismatched buttons and crazy hair. He also carried around a puppet that he made himself. The whole outfit did a good job of making him look insane. The make-up on the police woman Heidi alerted me that something odd was going on. I imagine women who want to be taken seriously in law enforcement would not wear dark lip stick and heavy blue eye shadow. This turned out to be true when she revealed to actually be the Limping Man’s lover.

My two favorite characters were Richard and Gertie. Richard was so upbeat that you knew he had to be crazy, and John Plough was good at timing things and saying things in just the right way to be hilarious. He may have been the best acted character because he never cracked a smile at the ridiculous things he was saying. Gertie was a sassy old lady who could not even speak English because of her stroke. It must have difficult for Kirsten Calvert to learn gibberish, because some of her lines were still meant to be understood (like “fud uwe”) for comedic effect. She delivered her lines fluently and shuffled herself across the stage exactly like a feeble old woman. Millet’s puppet was an interesting addition, but I believe a necessary one. The puppet had a dirty mouth which added to the humor, but his more important role was telling Claire the real story about the Limping Man. The face that Carson Cerney (Millet) made when he was speaking in the puppet’s voice was hilarious because he looked completely mad. He did a good change between a crazy puppet and a depressed convict. Libby Ricardo (Claire) was a good actress but she seemed like she was acting not like it was natural. In the first scene when she wakes up and talks to herself, the way she spoke seemed over acted and reminded me of actors from my high school musicals. It was not bad, but it was not as believable as John Plough or Cole Ernest. Cole Ernest as the Limping Man occasionally dropped his lisp, but I think it added more depth to his character because it always happened at emotional moments. Jordan Harris, as Kenny, had to withstand some of the funnier parts delivered by Richard. He did a fairly good job but he occasionally had to sneak a smile and no one could blame him. He had a hard time keeping back the smile when he was having a heart-to-heart with Claire as she finally realized some details of his life. But he made up for this with his genuine smile he put on as he was recounting the happy points between him and Claire on the day she lost her memory. Julia Wolff (Heidi) was a competent actor but I did not notice anything good or bad about her acting.

One of my favorite scenes was at the end of the first half when everyone was on stage at Gertie’s house. Claire and Richard were yelling, Gertie was stabbing Millet’s puppet as he screamed, the Limping Man was stabbing and yelling on the ground, and Kenny was wrestling with Heidi for the gun. What made this scene so enjoyable was that everyone took turns yelling at each other in a way that the audience could scan from Claire to Kenny and back again and understand what was going on at each station. Then suddenly the lights went out and the audience hears a gun shot. Also, as I waited for the play to start, I examined the set: on my left there was a table, and then a glimpse of the “car”, in the middle was the bright kitchen, and finally on my right was a bed with a lump in it. I realized that a person was under the covers! I liked this effect because the stage had no curtain and was so close to the audience that we would have watched Claire get in it, but this way the play could start immediately and it came as more of a surprise. The final scene was also memorable because Kenny was so excited to have his mother back. Not just understanding who he is, but understanding what they have gone through together. There is just white light on Richard, Claire, Kenny, and Gertie in the car, and Kenny is talking about how his mother can finally sew something together for him and he is so excited. He constantly has to try to keep his mother awake; it is sad because I did not feel like Claire understood how much it meant to her son. So she slowly drifted to sleep leaving Kenny sad and depressed once more

. I would recommend seeing “Fuddy Meers”. The set worked well in such a small space, the actors were good most of the time, and the director executed complicated scenes in a coherent manner.