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Funny ‘Fuddy Meers’ to feature plenty of mayhem

By Loren Keller

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s dark comedy “Fuddy Meers” is the story of Claire, an amnesiac who wakes up every morning to a blank slate and is faced with the task of piecing together the puzzle of her life starting from scratch.

The protagonist of the 2000 film “Memento” suffers a similar condition—though the bizarre plotlines of “Fuddy Meers” shouldn’t be quite as difficult for audiences to follow, says Sean Paul Bryan, who directs the final play of this year’s Iowa Summer Rep series.

“I think we get information easier in ‘Fuddy Meers,’” says Bryan, a Summer Rep acting veteran and first-time director who received an MFA in directing from the University of Iowa last year.

“When you see ‘Memento’ you really have to wrap your head around it, where the playwright here gives us the information that we need at the right moment we need it. The audience can just relax and enjoy the ride as opposed to having to think too much.”

The play opens in the West High School auditorium at 8 p.m. Thursday with additional performances scheduled for July 19, 23, 24, 25 and 26. Tickets are $24 with discounts for students and seniors, and available at the door an hour before each performance, online or by calling (319) 335-1160 or 1-800-HANCHER.

A hodgepodge of strange characters populate the 1999 play, most of whom suffer sort of physical or mental affliction. Among them are Gertie, a woman in her sixties who has suffered a stroke; Millet, an odd man with a puppet; and the mysterious Limping Man.

“There were definitely a lot of challenges in the rehearsal process, just making sure that everything is clear and easy to follow,” Bryan says. “But they’re such an exceptional cast they really came in with some great ideas and they’re already working toward those challenges. I think they pulled it off quite successfully.”

Actor John Watkins will make his Summer Rep debut in the role of the Limping Man, a half-blind, half-deaf man with a lisp who abducts Claire and claims her husband wants to kill her.

“When I first started rehearsing it felt like I was carrying a ton of bricks because there was so much that I had to think about on top of just communicating the lines,” Watkins says. “It just took practice to get all that stuff down, the limp, the lisp and everything else while keeping the humanity there within the character.”

Elena Passarello, who acted in six different roles in the Iowa Summer Rep production of Lindsay-Abaire’s “Wonder of the World,” plays Heidi, a tough woman in uniform who speaks in a Pittsburgh accent similar to John Travolta’s in “Hairspray.”

“She is a cop but she has this secret. She’s definitely a classic David Lindsay-Abaire character, in that in the beginning you think she’s one type of person—which is sort of a hard-nosed, officious cop— but in the end you find out she’s something completely different,” Passarello says.

“It’s really difficult when you’re playing the type of character who starts out one way and ends up another way. You never know how much to give away. It’s the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing: how much Mr. Hyde to do put in Dr. Jekyll when you’re introducing the audience to Dr. Jekyll?”

Playwright Lindsay-Abaire won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for “Rabbit Hole,” the third of his plays performed by Iowa Summer Rep this year, but “Fuddy Meers” is the one that put him on the map. A film version of the play is in the works.

“He’s such an eclectic writer,” Bryan says. “For someone to write something as fun and farcical as ‘Wonder of the World’ and then something as dark and absurd as ‘Fuddy Meers’ and then something as touching and terrifyingly beautiful as ‘Rabbit Hole,’ – he’s got an incredible skill. That’s something I really love about Summer Rep – they do one playwright a season and it’s so interesting to see some of the through-lines for each writer. There’s a definite voice there. You can hear his voice in all three plays but he approaches them so differently that it’s fresh each time you see it.”

Passarello, who received an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa this spring, calls Lindsay-Abaire “the best comic writer out there right now”; New York Observer critic John Heilpern has called the playwright a comic genius.

“It’s a real opportunity to see exactly what’s happening in American comedic theater,” Passarello says. “People are trying to make these really specific, interesting bits of commentary but still peppering it with slapstick. All of that old Three Stooges stuff is there, but the real geniuses of American comedy are wrapping them into these plot structures that are like symphonies that are so strange and discordant.”

The scene at West High School during rehearsals may have felt much the same as cast and crew members brushed elbows with members of the National Guard, who have been barracked there while helping with area flood recovery efforts.

“Talk about a clash of cultures,” Passarello says. “That’s one thing from the flood I’m not going to ever forget: the day I shared a gym with a whole bunch of National Guardsmen.”