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Confusion is charming in JHUT's Fuddy Meers

Issue date: 12/4/08
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Claire (senior Brittany Matava) and the
Media Credit: Britni Crocker
Claire (senior Brittany Matava) and the "limping man" (junior Davd Santare) comedically argue in JHUT's Fuddy Meers.

It will take until the third scene for you to even begin to comprehend the title. And it will take you even longer, possibly until the final scene, to understand the twisted plot. Nevertheless, Johns Hopkins University Theatre's newest play, Fuddy Meers, provides viewers with a story that is at once captivating and confusing.

The opening scene begins with Claire (senior Brittany Matava) awakening in a bed clad with Pottery Barn sheets. But don't be fooled. The plot is not all pastels and stripes.

The first hint that Fuddy Meers is not something straight from a Good Housekeeping magazine occurs when Claire's husband, Richard (sophomore Pierce Delahunt), arrives on the scene. Quickly, the audience learns that Claire suffers from something described as "psychogenic amnesia" and as of two years prior, Claire has woken up every morning with no memory.

However, Fuddy Meers is not simply the theatrical version of Adam Sandler's 50 First Dates either. This becomes quite obvious when junior David Santare frantically arrives in Claire's room. Face covered with a ski mask and half a manacle on his wrist, Santare's character is merely listed as "limping man" in the playbill. This is probably because the more accurate description of a "limping, half blind, half deaf man with a lisp" would have taken up too much space.

Although the opening scenes are comedically scripted and acted, it is the moments that sophomore Robert Powers is on stage that are the most hilarious. Powers plays Claire's son, Kenny, a pot-smoking teenager who spouts the play's most vulgar yet comedic lines. And although he fully embodies an angst-ridden adolescent who should be at least halfway through high school, Kenny is still floundering through eighth grade. Richard attributes this to Kenny's dyslexia.

Claire quickly decides to leave with the masked man once he tells her that he is her brother, Zach. Amidst Zach's many insistences that Claire is not safe with Richard, the two make their way to her mother's house.

Claire's mother, Gertie (senior Christen Cromwell), has just recently recovered from a stroke and now can speak only in "stroke talk," an incoherent babble comprised of jumbling the beginnings and endings of words. Cromwell's exuberant hand gestures and mixed-up dialogue are so excellently delivered that, although Gertie does not speak in an intelligible tongue, the audience can understand everything she says.
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Alice Blaker

posted 3/07/09 @ 12:58 AM EST

That looks like lots of fun. When I was in college we didn't had so many fun activities.

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