Fuddy Meers at Phoenix Theatre

Claire 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.

Authors

• David Lindsay-Abaire