Sad-Funny "Fuddy" at MTC QUILTERS warms up the stage

Publicity for Marin Theatre Company’s new production, “Fuddy Meers” describes it as “hysterical,” “mad-cap,” “zany,” and yet, during last Wednesday’s show, there was barely a chuckle in the audience. The prevailing mood seemed to be thoughtful, even serious. What’s going on?

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire wrote “Fuddy” when he was in graduate school, and it was his first professionally-produced play. He’s since gone on to great success as a screenwriter, a Broadway playwright, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and now as author of a successful new Broadway show, “Good People.” Nothing zany.

But through all of Lindsay-Abaire’s work, writes MTC Artistic Director, Jasson Minadakis, runs a current of sympathy for his characters. “This compassion is the essential quality of David’s writing,” says Minadakis. In another part of the same program, the playwright is quoted that his characters are “outsiders in search of clarity.” Here are the outsiders at work in “Fuddy Meers.”

Central character, Claire, wakes to a clanging alarm clock, is greeted by a husband she can’t remember and offered a dress from her closet that is supposed to be her favorite. The husband, Richard, says that he is about to drive their son, Kenny, to school. Kenny’s in eighth grade, he reminds her. She can’t remember.

Richard also reminds Claire that she has amnesia, has had it for two years, but when she asks how she got it, he evades the question. None of this bothers her. Even the limping, lisping man in a ski mask who crawls out from under Claire’s bed, fails to frighten Claire. The man says he’s her brother, Zach, here to rescue her from Richard and take her home to Gertie, their mother. Claire goes along.

By now, any semblance of a character-driven story has begun to buckle and distort, much like the images in the fun-house mirrors that Gertie, with her speech defect, describes as “fuddy meers.”

Richard is driving the slumping, sullen Kenny and sharing his marijuana. They get pulled over by an attractive female who may or may not be a cop, but does carry a gun.

Claire, still in bedroom slippers, arrives with Zach at her mother’s home. Zach, once the mask is off, reveals a badly deformed ear. He is deaf on that side. He also wears a dangling manacle.

Gertie is struggling with a severe speech defect from a stroke. She’s pleased to see her daughter, but seems frightened of Zach, supposedly her son.

They are interrupted by a figure at the window, Millet, also wearing half a manacle. Millet speaks through his rude hand puppet, Hinky Pinky. He is desperately attached to this puppet.

Portraying these not-quite-lifelike folks needs an imaginative director (Ryan Rilette) and a cast with superior talent. As Clair, Mollie Stickney strikes just the right note of good-natured befuddlement, and as Richard, her husband, Andrew Hurteau can seem either a good guy who puts up with a lot or an advantage-seeking exploiter.

Tim True as the limping man with the cauliflower ear is both terrifying and pitiable. Dena Martinez as Heidi, the non-cop, is seductive, but vaguely threatening. As Kenny, Sam Leichter manages to grow and change as Clair does, while Lance Gardner’s Millet/ aka Hinky Pinky reveals a painful, grown-up example of parental abuse. Joan Mankin’s Gertie plays her whole role in “stroke talk,” and does it so securely, the audience can almost – but not quite – understand.

“Fuddy Meers” is an engaging story of six characters and their interactions. It moves fast – could even be presented as a long one-act, and its ending is perfect. But it’s not hilarious.

“Fuddy Meers” will be at the Marin Theatre Company through April 24. Performances are Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8p.m., Wednesdays at 7:30, and Sundays at 7p.m. Matinees are at 1p.m. April 14 and at 2p.m. April 9, 23, and every Sunday. Ticket prices are between $33 and $53, with discounts available. For complete information, see www.marintheatre.org or call 388-5208.

Before Ross Valley Players’ “Quilters” begins, the musical’s director, Linda Dunn, points out a quilt that is draped on part of the set. It’s hers, she says, a family heirloom. Her family were Texas homesteaders, and sitting beside her grandmother at the quilting frame is a treasured memory.

Like the piecing bags each character carries, “Quilters” is a collection of skits and songs, joined together through the ongoing construction of old Sarah’s legacy quilt, a colorful cloth album of her life on the 19th Century American prairie. It was a hard life. Sarah remembers a blizzard so hard the cows froze. She recalls Pa’s disastrous experiment with windmills, dust storms and prairie fires. Each memory shows up as a block in the quilt.

But prairie life was also joyous and exuberant. The all-female cast of eight performs musical numbers that vary from an old spiritual and folk songs to adaptations from poems. But the show is more than a choral work. An offstage piano, played by Kathryn McGeorge, accompanies the singing, while onstage, cast members perform on the guitar, dulcimer and drum. With the addition of fine choreography arranged by Linda Dunn, these songs move.

“Thread the Needle” leads into a happy dance based on a children’s game. A covered wagon is constructed onstage, and the wagon bumps its way, musically, across the landscape. “Every Log in My House” guides the cast through construction of a shelter, and a baptism by immersion washes more than it was expected to.

One audience favorite depicts a quilting bee organized by the mother of James Prentice to prepare a special new quilt for her son Jamie’s 21st birthday. As they sew in time to the music, the young ladies stitch in hidden affectionate messages for the birthday boy. (We never get to see Jamie; we can only imagine what inspires all this devotion.)
Other male characters are played by the women of the cast, seven of whom take multiple parts. Only Sarah, the mother, (Sandi V. Weldon) is consistently steady and wise. Quilt pieces, she says, stand for “what’s given to you and what you make of them.”

Sheila M. Devitt, Kele Gasparini, Dawn Marie Hamilton, Olivia Harrison, Carolyn Montellato, Monica Turner and Rachel Watts complete this talented cast.

Michael Berg’s period costumes are too good to cut up, even for quilts. Billie Cox’s whip-cracking sound effects and Bruce Lackovic’s rustic set build on the 19th Century mood.
The audience does, eventually, get a look at Sarah’s Legacy Quilt – and it’s a beauty.

This 1984 work by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek started life in Colorado, at the Denver Center Theatre Company. In the years since, it’s had a full production schedule, including runs in New York and three Tony nominations.

“Quilters” will play at The Barn Theatre in Ross through Sunday, April 17.
Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8:00, and Sundays at 2:00. Ticket prices run from $20 to $30, $25 for seniors and students. For reservations or more information, see www.rossvalleyplayers.com or call the box office, 456-9555.