Show and Tell; Fuddy Meers true miscommunication

Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire can be looked at very similar to one of the plays we analyzed so far, 4000 miles by Amy Herzog.  Through our analysis of plays this semester we have looked closer into mis-communication when Leo and Vera never cleared up until the end of the play.  The major differences that you do not see in 4000 miles that is presence of the lack of reality.

Fuddy Meers brings a cast of characters that all have very unique qualities that they bring to the play and each of the characters tries to tell thier story.  The question to readers is who is telling the truth?

Claire suffers from amnesia every day and must be told or explained her life by her husband every time.

Richard is Claires current husband and the past is not told correctly we find later in the play because he has written himself into Claire's life and lies about everything he can to maintain the relationship.

Kenny curses his way through the entire play and if he wasn't high he may be able to clear his relationship with his mother and really become the family they always wanted.

The play begins like every other day with a binder of Claire's life explained by Richard.  Kenny is high, and Claire is clueless to her surroundings.  Everything seems like a normal everyday dysfunctional family.  The first twist that is thrown into the story is that there are things in the book that have been left out.  Including the fact that Claire was married before?

Limping Man(or lisping man) a lisp is difficult to communicate the story especially when you are trying to deceive everyone you talk to.

Millet is two characters, or two parts of his mind.  He has a hand puppet that does most of all his talking and creates the real life dialogue.  While the human is more of a puppet.

Gertie Claire's mother had suffered a stroke after Claire's amnesia and speaks in Stroke tongues.  Though the real classy ideal of this play is that she is the only one who knows the truth and she can not clearly explain it.

The limping man and millet escape prison, kidnap Claire and head off to Gertie's house.  Thinking that she will not be able to communicate the truth to Claire the limping man plots to trick Claire into his reality.  We find in the play that Claire's amnesia was caused by the Limping man's own abuse.

Lastly we are left in the script with an ending of the day and wondering whether or not she will remember all the new information that she received through the day.

So just like Leo, she has a choice to make her life right or not.  Though her condition is what is going to change her idea but the playwright still leaves it up to our interpretation.

Trifles...What we don't see.

Trifles is a play that we can expect the unexpected.  One point I would like to bring up revolves around the term forsaken. The text tells us, “I wish I’d come over here once in a while! That was a crime!”  (pg.5). Socially these women had to come to a decision to hide and ultimately protect their fellow woman.  The guilt of Mrs. Hale and the way that the women explain that Mr. Wright was a hard man made for the character Minnie to feel forsaken in that she had nowhere to turn her problems to.   The murder is even forsaken when Hale and the Attorney confirm, “Well, women are used to worrying about trifles” (pg. 2). Though who is worrying about her?  The men are not concerned with who the really villain may be. Villainy  has made the play a clear representation of the unseen.

In the opening stage directions it reads, “The kitchen in a now abandoned farmhouse” (pg.1). The world is tight, private, and begins with nothing but what everyone comes in with. The sense of something has gone wrong sets the mood of mystery and intrigue that is not happy.  When we finally are told the exposition where John Wright is, Minnie was narrated to say, “He’s Dead” “She just pointed upstairs” (pg.1). What could be upstairs? The world we found out throughout the play is not vacant of information, trifles, but physical space.