Playwright: David Lindsay-Abaire

At: Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway

Phone: (773) 528-9696; $18

Runs through: July 31

Brush away the affected Looney Tunes trappings (about which I’ll go into more detail later), and Fuddy Meers, by New York playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, really doesn’t offer anything beyond a rather immature pastiche of a tired suspense story. The play—about a woman with a particular type of amnesia that causes her to wake each morning with a clean slate and no sense of what went on before—is a desperately ambitious attempt to be dark and farcical. But it’s simply desperate.

We have poor Claire (played by the always on-target Jennifer Avery, who is only adequate here; Louise Lasser is the only actress that comes to mind who could really do something with this rather bland centerpiece role), who, at the opening of the play, is being attended to by her solicitous husband, Richard (John Ferrick). Right away, we know Richard is hiding a lot from Claire, by the way he skirts her reasonable questions and provides her only with a scrapbook of basics to get her through yet another day. Her son Kenny (a capable turn by Nick Bender), a skate-boarder type who, at 17, has progressed only as far as the eighth grade, provides increasing hints of serious family dysfunction. Things veer out of control when a limping, lisping man turns up, dressed in the garb of an escaped convict and warning Claire that, if she doesn’t accompany him, her life is in danger. Thus begins a road trip that culminates at the home of Claire’s mother, a woman who speaks in gibberish due to a stroke (inspired work—the best in the play—from Lynne Hall). There, Claire tries to sort out the puzzle of her life while chaos reigns around her. Millet (Kyle Hamman) a former janitor also on the lam, who speaks with the help of a foul-mouthed sock puppet, is on the scene and later, a tough gal who seems to be a prison matron (Anita Deeley) shows up with Richard and Kenny. Bit by bit, the truth about Claire and the serious ups and downs of her life are revealed … and we see the peril these past alliances have put her in.

So we have a woman with amnesia, a dim-witted rube with a sock puppet, a disfigured, limping, lisping bad guy, a son with chip on his shoulder that hides a good heart, a suspicious husband, and a mother who is barely understandable due to ‘stroke talk.’ All of these wacky, warped characters do a serviceable job at masquerading the trumped-up, predictable, and weak story at its center. I won’t reveal the plot twists and turns here, but they add up to little more than a Lifetime movie script. But even the trite suspense is marred by the playwright and director’s desire to present a busy, over-the-top universe that really has little satire or point. Beyond being self-consciously far-out, most of the characters here have no real rationale for being the way they are. And the ‘laughs’ that are supposed to be present in this ‘dark farce’ are weak (opening night had what seemed to be a number of audience plants who laughed uproariously at each utterance, regardless of its inherent humor). Most of the audience, like me, just seemed bewildered at what was so damn funny about Fuddy Meers (the title is the garbled, ‘stroke talk’ pronunciation of fun house mirrors).

Strawdog has done some excellent work in the past. I can only hope that Fuddy Meers is an aberration, a lapse in judgment when choosing materials. This is one little company that can do a lot better.