About the Play:

Fuddy Meers has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

Fuddy Meers is a full-length comedy by David Lindsay-Abaire. A seriocomic portrait of an amnesiac wife and mother who wakes up every morning to discover she has forgotten everything she knows, leaving her husband to fill her in details of her identity and situation. A heroine with such a vulnerable Achilles heel can only fall into comic trouble, and Claire does when she's unwittingly kidnapped by a disfigured, limping man, a henchman who talks through a hand puppet, and a female cop.

Fuddy Meers revolves around Claire who has a rare form of psychogenic amnesia that erases her memory whenever she goes to sleep. This morning, like all mornings, she wakes up a blank slate. Her chipper husband comes in with a cup of coffee, explains her condition, hands her a book filled with all sorts of essential information, and he disappears into the shower. A limping, lisping, half-blind, half-deaf man in a ski mask, pops out from under her bed and claims to be her brother, there to save her. Claire's info book is quickly discarded, and she's hustled off to the country-house of her mother, a recent stroke victim whose speech has been reduced to utter gibberish. Claire's journey gets even more complicated when a dimwitted thug with a foul-mouthed hand puppet pops up at a window, and her driven husband and perpetually stoned son show up with a claustrophobic lady-cop that they've kidnapped. Every twist and turn in this funhouse plot bring Claire closer to revealing her past life and everything she thought she'd forgotten. It's one harrowing and hilarious turn after another on this roller coaster ride through the day of an amnesiac trying to decipher her fractured life. This poignant and brutal new comedy traces one woman's attempt to regain her memory while surrounded by a curio-cabinet of alarmingly bizarre characters.

Fuddy Meers premiered in 1999 at the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) Off-Broadway in New York City and earned the kind of raves that a promising young playwright dreams about. The New York Observer called him some kind of comic genius. Since then it has received over 300 productions across America and abroad (including London's West End), and has become a popular choice for school and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…heady fun…fresh, zingy dialogue, which revels in warping the language of self-help books … Like the resourceful chef who turns leftovers into haute cuisine, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire blends clichéd ingredients into something savory and distinctive … [a] dark, sweet and thoroughly engaging comedy." — New York Times

"…an antically zany new play…." — Variety

"A zany, disturbing and strangely affecting comedy. It's a bit of youthful happiness unlike any other." — Associated Press

"…wicked fun … the evening explodes with laughter." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

David Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright, lyricist, librettist and screenwriter. He is the author of Rabbit Hole, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His other theatre works include Good People, Fuddy Meers, and Kimberly Akimbo. He is Co-Chair of the Juilliard School's Playwriting Program.