Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival should put a sign outside the theater for the next few weeks: Dangerous Comedy Ahead.

        It's easy to see why Fuddy Meers, making its regional debut in a high-octane production at the festival, was such a hit in New York.

        Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire delivers the theatrical equivalent of a ride on a Wild Mouse. It dips, it turns, it twists. It throws you off balance. It never fails to surprise. What makes Fuddy Meers art is that when the ride is over, your sides will be aching from laughter but your knees will be shaking for an entirely different reason.

        Fuddy is about Claire (Anne E. Schilling) who wakes up on what turns out to be a very special morning. Hubby Richard (Nick Rose), who is scarily jolly like some kind of sitcom nightmare, explains to Claire (as he does every day) that she has a very special kind of amnesia that makes her re-lose her memory every night when she goes to sleep.

        Richard goes off to take a shower and out from under the bed pops the lisping Limping Man (Jeremy Dubin) who claims to be Claire's brother.

        But why is he deaf and blind in his right ear and eye? Why is there a manacle hanging from his wrist? And why does he go off in a rage at the sight of bacon?

        They escape to visit Mom (Jeanne Austin) who knows the answers to all the mysteries about Claire's life but unfortunately has had a stroke and is very hard to understand.

        Fuddy Meers is absurd, dark, harrowing. The title is the playwright's “stroke talk” for the “funny mirrors” of a funhouse, whose reflections are completely off-kilter.

        Scenic designer Will Turbyne has filled the stage with funhouse-style doors and windows, everything at odd angles. The only improvement would have been to make subtle scenic changes to reflect Claire's evolving view.

        What makes the play such powerful stuff is that Mr. Lindsay-Abaire isn't interested in just frolicking with amnesia and quite a medley of physical and mental disabilities.

        He uses farce and slapstick to disguise a deep psychic wound at which his grown-up Alice in Wonderland relentlessly prods as she looks for the source of a trauma so terrible it has made her want to forget her life.

        In the end, she finds her answers. But of course, the end isn't the end. It's the beginning of something else. Maybe.

        The ensemble pitch themselves into the action, and the acting company is uniformly strong. Ms. Schilling is especially persuasive as she takes us along on Claire's journey.

        Brian Isaac Phillips is again assigned the psycho role, this time playing deeply disturbed Millet, who acts out through his foul-mouthed sock puppet Hinky Binky.

        There is stand-out support from two members of the festival's new Young Company. Elise Hedblom has energy to burn, and Christopher Guthrie covers a lot of emotional ground as Claire's troubled son.

       Fuddy Meers, through Sept. 30, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 381-2273.

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