Jennifer Avery and James Anthony Zoccoli in Strawdog's Fuddy Meers

In Fuddy Meers, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, he creates a bizarre group of characters who speak in a heightened, sometimes melodramatic language. They present a stylistically quirky and sometimes bizarre humor in a broad style. On the other hand, he gives these strange people very human through lines that demand a certain dramatic depth. The delightfully strange world that we see for 75 percent of the play turns out to have very mundane, even depressing roots.

The challenge, then, for any production of this play lies in creating a world that can accommodate the broad stylings of the humor, but leave room for the serious turn that the story takes at the end. In this, director Kimberly Senior's production manages half a success.

From the moment Claire (Jennifer Avery) awakes, with no idea where she is, and her presumed husband, Richard (John Ferrick), makes his overly upbeat appearance, it's quite clear that things are not what they seem. Add to this an abduction by her supposed brother in a ski mask with a pronounced lisp and limp (James Anthony Zoccoli), her mother who can't speak properly due to a stroke (Lynne Hall) and a convict who escaped Sing Sing with her brother and speaks through a sock puppet (Kyle Hamman) and you've got expectations of some zany humor. And the play and production deliver right up until intermission, which arrives at the height of a struggle between all the play's parties.

In the second act, reality begins to set in. And so do some of the problems. The broad choices that work so well in the first act, ring false in the second. Allison Greaves' costumes, which support the humor, tend to detract from the realism. Senior's production tries to make the massive gear shift Lindsay-Abaire dictates, but in the end, they don't quite get there. It may not even be possible to affect such a huge change. Only a truly exceptional production could manage it, and Strawdog's attempt, while a good one, doesn't quite get to exceptional.

Fuddy Meers—Strawdog

Chris Jones, Tribune—"And therein lies the main problem with this script: It wants to have things too many ways…He's an immensely talented and capable writer, but this is a play with insufficient confidence to trust its own better instincts. All that said, the very capable young Chicago director Kimberly Senior does her considerable best to give this hybrid play a production that's sufficiently credible that we stay with the characters throughout, and sufficiently funny that all the bizarre people on stage don't begin to cloy. She succeeds admirably."

Jenn Goddu, Reader—"Director Kimberly Senior and her cast don't always capture the script's chaotic silliness—scenes of mayhem demand more coherent coordination. But the performers do ground the off-kilter action in nuanced, sharply comic characterizations. When Jennifer Avery's buoyant Claire gets kidnapped by a limping, lisping man in a ski mask, she struggles to maintain her sunny disposition despite the others' oddball antics. The actors are so convincing as the complications pile up and the absurdity burgeons that we too become pleasantly befuddled. And the show's fine design team sometimes suggests we're inside Claire's murky mind, which proves an intriguing, entertaining place to be."

Rick Reed, Windy City—"All of these wacky, warped characters do a serviceable job at masquerading the trumped-up, predictable, and weak story at its center. I won't reveal the plot twists and turns here, but they add up to little more than a Lifetime movie script. But even the trite suspense is marred by the playwright and director's desire to present a busy, over-the-top universe that really has little satire or point. Beyond being self-consciously far-out, most of the characters here have no real rationale for being the way they are. And the "laughs" that are supposed to be present in this "dark farce" are weak. Most of the audience, like me, just seemed bewildered at what was so damn funny about Fuddy Meers."

The Pyrates—Defiant Theatre

Michael Phillips, Tribune—"The Defiant production staged by co-adapter Justin Fletcher has the right comic instincts but little finesse. Fletcher and Richard Ragsdale's adaptation lumbers when it should sprint from scene to scene, ship to shore, maiden to dastard. Time and again the audience sits there waiting for Martin McClendon's scenery to be relocated. On the plus side there's a lovely duel between JB Waterman's Avery and nemesis Geoff Coates' nicely understated Bilbo, in which fight choreographer David Woolley takes advantage of the full Chopin Theatre stage."

Christopher Piatt, Sun-Times—"Fletcher nimbly orchestrates more than 30 actors (a monstrous cast, even by off-Loop standards) thanks in large part to fight choreographer David Woolley, who manages to make everyone look proficient in swordplay. Fletcher also knows when to have the actors play camp and when to play cutthroat. Literally.
     The text, unfortunately, stretches what needs to be a matinee-length romp over three acts, sacrificing too much momentum by the final sea chantey. At its apex The Pyrates is a textbook example of Chicago pop-fusion theater."

Jack Helbig, Reader—"(T)he show features plenty of onstage battles. The sword fighting is exceptionally clean and well executed, thanks to fight choreographer David Woolley and his assistant, Geoff Coates, who also appears as the pirate Bilbo. In fact, on opening night the fight choreography was the only aspect of the production everyone seemed to have down pat. Lines were missed, a video meant to set the mood malfunctioned several times, and set pieces wobbled. But you have to expect some degree of mess from a project that's both large and low budget…I left The Pyrates wanting more—wishing it was the first movie of a double feature."

Nina Metz, New City—"Well, you've got to give Defiant this much: If nothing else, the eleven-year-old theater company is consistent. The troupe's newest show, The Pyrates, now at the Chopin, is as messy, chaotic and lacking in focus as any of its other recent efforts. Based on George MacDonald Fraser's 1983 historical novel about seventeenth-century swashbucklers, damsels in distress and thievery on the high seas, the Defiant adaptation (by Richard Ragsdale and director Justin Fletcher) is a send-up that never quite got sent."

Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—"Typical of the Defiant approach, the production satirizes the swashbuckling genre with nearly non-stop action, over-the-top and self-aware acting, anachronistic use of music (Maurice Chevalier, Nat Cole, heavy metal) and language, and a whole bag of technical and stylistic tricks from film clips to puppets (a peg-leg dwarf and a giant octopus) to disco sword fights. Defiant also throws 30—count 'em, 30—bodies into the show. But the shotgun approach doesn't work this time. The Pyrates is a sloppy, no-particular-style production with fights that look amateurish despite David Wooley and Geoff Coates as fight choreographers."

Romeo & Juliet—Oak Park Festival Theatre

Nina Metz, Tribune—"Shakespeare's always a challenge, and in recent years, economic considerations have forced the Oak Park festival to draw from a less experienced, less accomplished pool of actors (specifically, non-union performers) with the occasional exception…Too often, members of the cast render their lines meaningless with too much inflection, not enough inflection or, quite simply, the wrong inflection. Every once in a while, a small, unexpected moment twinkles through like a jewel peeking out from a pile of hay."

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—"Hearing the familiar speeches declaimed with an Appalachian twang may strike indigenous audiences as droll. But the hard consonants and mellifluous vowels lend the dialogue an urgency too often muffled by overly refined phrasing, in turn sparking the actors to a level of conviction immediately invoking our empathy…This Oak Park Festival Theatre production—which restores the professionalism temporarily compromised by financial and organizational setbacks last season—represents a fresh and imaginative interpretation of a venerable classic. With the rains finally ending, so praiseworthy an effort must surely be rewarded."

Strong Poison—Lifeline Theatre

Michael Phillips, Tribune—"(Adapter Frances) Limoncelli condenses the 1930 Sayers novel in dogged fashion, delivering the story in 29 scenes across two acts and about 2? hours. Though the Wimsey-Vane relationship holds the stage—the play comes to life in their first meeting, if only intermittently thereafter—there's an air of diffidence floating above the story itself…It's a youthful and game cast, a little on the pushy side. Not a lot of dry wit here, when all-American zest and overstatement will do. It'll do, I suppose, but it only does so much."

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—"The Lifeline production features a smart, seamless, easy-to-follow new adaptation by Frances Limoncelli; shrewd, playful direction by Dorothy Milne; a wonderfully evocative set by Tom Burch, and a cast of eight actors capable of suggesting 48. Most of the performers play a great gallery of roles, and each role is sharply etched in comedy and caricature. Mystery fans may thrill to the explanation of arsenic's special properties. But for others, the most intriguing question posed in "Strong Poison" is this: Will Vane marry Wimsey? For as Sayers clearly understood, human beings are the greatest mysteries of all."

Jennifer Vanasco, Reader—"Lifeline ensemble member Frances Limoncelli has adapted Dorothy L. Sayers's 1930 mystery novel—not one of her best—into a sleek, witty romantic romp that also gently probes the changing role sof women and the fluctuations of class in Britain after World War I. Director Dorothy Milne's ensemble deftly captures the trends of the day—from intellectually wispy spiritualism to raucous, outrageous bohemianism—giving the production a marvelously solid sense of time and place."

Web Behrens, Free Press—"Arsenic and dangerous romance, when presented in the right doses, should be enough to make any play a hit—and indeed that's true of Lifeline Theatre's sparkling adaptation of Dorothy L. Sayers Strong Poison. As a bonus it comes with breezy British wit and some nicely evinced early-20th-century feminism, all directed with panache by Dorothy Milne…Abetting the masterful Greenberg is an excellent ensemble handling multiple roles."

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—"Frances Limoncelli effects another crisply efficient page-to-stage transition, paced with brisk alacrity by director Dorothy Milne. Peter Greenberg, his air of repressed exuberance rendering our sleuth a tweed-clad knight-in-armor, is perfectly matched with Jennifer Tyler, whose regal sang-froid reveals the puzzled prisoner to be a damsel-in-distress worthy of rescue. The muscle of the show, however, is the six-member ensemble who adroitly orchestrate their overlapping dialogue and split-second delivery to portray no less than 19 characters, not including clusters of nameless bystanders."

Quote:

"When the pre-show announcement playfully warns its audience against using recording devices or 'we will jump you in the lobby,' that's your first big hint things aren't going to proceed according to tradition-even though you're sitting in the Goodman's staid Albert Theater about to see a show with roots in Sophocles."—Web Behrens reviewing Goodman Theatre's Electricidad in Free Press.