Through 12/21 @ Albany Civic Theater

*All photos by Jason Zuppardi of Best Frame Forward*

“Fuddy Meers is a joyous way to spend a December evening.”

Like a strong cup of dark coffee and a bracing morning shower, Albany Civic Theater has a revivifying production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers playing through the next three weekends until 12/21.

Everyone on stage is new to the venerable Second Avenue playhouse and they all score big laughs with this 1999 off-Broadway, dark comedy about a woman with amnesia who wakes up every day needing to build her identity from scratch. What a great way to ring in the holidays by welcoming these new performers to the South Albany stage!

Playing the Sleeping Beauty part of Claire is Amanda Conlon who has a bright, saucer eyed embrace of all the new information thrown at her. It’s a terrific performance and grounds all the wackiness that’s about to come hurling at her and us. The energy and emotional openness never flag until the late evening car ride home which closes the play.

Waking her every morning is her husband Richard who guides her through her morning routine which includes coffee and her biography. Gregor Wynnyczuk works well in the role as I was never thoroughly convinced of what he was saying. The actor has a wonderful opaqueness that makes him at the same time official and responsible while also being untrustworthy, like any current state department official.

Also there to greet her is her half-baked eighth grader played with a strong, vibrant snarling attitude by Dominic Tillou. After her husband introduces her to the book he has composed to guide her through the day, he jumps into the shower and The Limping Man (Eric-jon Tasker) breaks into the house and convinces Claire that he is her brother and she needs to run away with him to their mother Gertie’s house.

Tasker is a standout in this gallery of characters; he commands the stage and forcefully takes charge. He can be offhand, sneaky, enraged or literally wounded in his maniacal pursuit. He is great fun to watch.

The trip to Grandma’s gives the story a fractured fairy tale quality and was introduced with a scene change featuring the cast and crew in fright wigs moving furniture and opening curtains to circus music (superb sound design by Barry Streifert). Director Terri Storti has provided Big Top fun which spins wildly out of this story of family trauma and broken people.

Grandma is played by our favorite Massachusetts visiting actor, Jackie DeGiorgis. Any time she is making the trip to play in the 518, you are guaranteed a committed, thoughtful, disciplined, comic creation you will be happy to catch.

Also along for the ride is Isabelle McKeon, an officer who pulls over Richard and Kenny and finds herself kidnapped. McKeon is very talented with her blue dialogue. I laughed often at her filthy responses. Last are the pair of Millet and his hand puppet Inky Binky played with great skill by Alex Headley. Late in the second act, I made an effort to watch Headley as he spoke as Binky and only then was I dissuaded from the notion that there were nine members of the cast. Inky is a powerfully vivid puppet.

The many settings are crowded on the ACT stage but for the most part, Storti stages it well. There are also many voices with many colors (stroke impaired, lisping, puppet) and it’s not always 100% clear what is being said. Some of that is deliberate by the playwright but I did lose a little too much verbal detail, I believe.

David Lindsay-Abaire is a very popular (Good People, the book for Shrek) Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for Rabbit Hole and Tony winner for Kimberly Akimbo. Christmas entertainment is filled with tradition but it’s good to remember that the holiday celebrates birth and a trip to this contemporary comic master’s early career carnival of Fuddy Meers is a joyous way to spend a December evening.

Fuddy Meers plays at Albany Civic Theater through 12/21. Tickets: www.albanycivictheater.org or 518-462-1297