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'Fuddy Meers' wonderfully disturbing Monday Apr 2, 2001 at 2:00 AM Dec 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM Bill Varble You know, says Claire, the central character in David Lindsay-Abaire's Fuddy Meers, that puppet was saying the craziest things about me. Is he a trustworthy source of information? He's a puppet. Yet here's what's weird. In the world of Fuddy Meers, Hinky-Binky, the puppet, is one of Claire's best sources. And Claire needs all the help she can get. She wakes up every morning not knowing who she is, or where, or why! One of the most provocative plays to come down the pike in a while, Fuddy Meers opened Saturday at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Black Swan Theatre. The darkly comic Fuddy asks this question: What if you woke up every day with total amnesia? What if you could remember stuff all day but would lose it all — poof — every time you went to sleep? What if you started each day as a blank slate, over and over? Well, you would be very focused, as Claire is, on the credibility of those you found around you. Knowing how far we can trust the stories others tell us is a big issue, but seldom is it as crucial as it is for poor Claire. Claire (Judith-Marie Bergan) enters the world of the play one morning as clueless as us, the audience. Richard (John Pribyl), a pleasant-enough man, tells her he is her husband who loves her and will help her through the day. And what a day it will be. While Richard is in the shower, a strange man with a limp and a lisp crawls out from under the bed and tells Claire he will save her from Richard, but they must hurry. So it begins. As we begin meeting characters that seem to have put the Q in quirky, we realize that, just like Claire, we don't know who to believe. The mysterious Limping Man (Richard Elmore) either saves or abducts Claire, and they flee to the countryside and the home of Gertie (Catherine E. Coulson), a stroke-addled old lady who seems to be Claire's mother. Limping Man's strange friend Millet (Ray Porter) uses Hinky-Binky to say things he can't say himself. Meanwhile, Richard, with Kenny (Gregory D. Linington) in tow, sets off in the car in pursuit of Limping Man and Claire. Kenny is apparently Claire's (although not Richard's) troubled teenage son. He comes with a haze of pot smoke and an attitude. Richard and Kenny are soon joined by Heidi (Eileen DeSandre), a lady cop. Except that maybe Heidi isn't a real cop. In fact, maybe none of these characters is what he or she claims to be. At Gertie's there are slips of the tongue, veiled threats, guarded allusions to a plan. As Claire struggles to make sense of what may be partial memories in the ensuing chaos, she looks like somebody having acid flashbacks while watching the four Marx Brothers plunked crazily down into the middle of Groundhog Day as directed by Monty Python. What has she gotten herself into? The answer to that question holds the key to the characters? secrets and to Claire's amnesia. Because these people are funny funhouse mirrors — fuddy meers in Gertie's jabberwocky speech — they give back distorted reflections to anybody who dares to look. Their central secret is a horrific one. And it's what keeps a terrific play from being a straight-on comedy and makes it instead a disturbing — but very funny — drama about damaged people looking for love in all the wrong places. Directed by James Edmondson, the genre-bending Fuddy Meers gets strong acting performances all around and features the creative production values that often mark a good Black Swan play. There were a couple minor glitches of timing and nuance on opening night, but they didn't dim the production's strange luster. There is one false note that, while minor, is a howler. The skull iconography of Limping Man's Grateful Dead T-shirt is certainly intended to convey menace. But the effect of a character who's supposed to be scary wearing the colors of the ultimate good-vibes band is laughably disconcerting. But there's little else to quibble with in Lindsay-Abaire's darkly hilarious reflection on the human condition. Fuddy Meers may not be suitable for everybody. It includes strong language, gunshots and smoking. It is slated for matinees Wednesday and Sunday and evening shows Thursday and Saturday. Tickets will be hard to get. — Reach reporter at 776-4478 or e-mail