Family Circus

The lunatic antics and crazed conveniences that propel David Lindsay-Abaire's Fuddy Meers would be irritating if the play weren't such a brilliant piece of writing. Plying the hoary subject of amnesia as if he invented it, Lindsay-Abaire coats it in rubber and bounces it all over the stage; he and the show's director, Joseph Price, master the idea that you can take a play in any direction when your heroine remembers nothing about yesterday -- and won't remember today tomorrow. With this superb production, the Unicorn Theatre could be the only December commitment you must keep.

Claire (Melinda McCrary) awakens to her alarm, stretches and greets the morning. Those are the last normal seconds of her day, because she has a particularly harsh form of amnesia -- or so she's convinced by her husband, Richard (Kyle L. Mowry). So profound is her memory lapse that she doesn't know Richard, their pothead son, Kenny (Jake Walker), or even her own name. "I love search-word puzzles ... don't I?" she exclaims, proceeding to work on a "fruit-theme" puzzle through the first act. It is a silly flourish that exists solely so that Claire can sporadically and hilariously shout out such finds as "kiwi" and "cantaloupe."

The next contestant in this game the playwright has created is Limping Man (Scott Cordes), who might also be called Blind in One Eye Man, Deaf in One Ear Man or Hideously Disfigured Man. The lisping prison-escapee says he's Claire's brother -- she replies with something like "okay, then" -- and takes her to visit their mother, Gertie (Nancy Marcy), another in the family who isn't quite right. Gertie's stroke has left her verbally incapacitated; her daughter's name comes out "Clay," expletives sound like "bob dabbit," and the title of the play is her contorted version of "funhouse mirrors."

Two more characters show up who aren't what they seem: Millet (Matt Rapport), another convict on the lam, and the highway patrol officer Heidi (Ione Blocker). Well, three -- you can't discount the contributions of Binky, Millet's foul-mouthed puppet. They take the audience through a night of slapstick, farce and a couple of heartbreaking denouements that halfway explain why Claire's mind is so jumbled.

Jeffrey Cady's lights, David Kiehl's sound, Paula Pearson's props and Georgianna Londre's costumes are gripped by the same intelligent lunacy as the playwright's. So is set designer Gary Mosby, who has built the most colorful blank slate imaginable. Ditto the assured troupe of actors, each so perfectly cast that all seem to have been the people Lindsay-Abaire pictured over his typewriter as he created the show.

They're working at full throttle throughout the play, but pay special attention to moments such as Mowry's holding up a pound of bacon as if it's an evil talisman, Cordes' recoiling in terror from it and McCrary's befuddled "Are you a vegetarian?" At one point, when McCrary screams "Goddamn it, you don't hear barking?" it's clear she's pleading for the audience to come to her rescue. You'll surely empathize; part of you wants to save her from the madness. But the more selfish part will want to sit back and simply roll with what is one of the best plays of the year.

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The ho shebang: Sharing the Unicorn stage with Fuddy Meers on its off days and at 11 p.m. on weekends is the bittersweet tale of a guy who admits that he's "not a nice person." The Santaland Diaries is crafted from the David Sedaris story of the same name, wherein the writer takes a gig as a Macy's elf one desperate December. Seeing to the cries and whimpers of the needy and the greedy, he shoos tots in and out of the labyrinthine department-store Santaland while grasping the last bits of sanity left in his depleted bag of resources. As played by Ron Megee, he is a shot of spiked punch.

Director Jeff Church has a much bigger playing field to work with than he had at this time last year, on the set of the theater's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Santaland Diaries bares all the backstage antiglamour of playing Santa's little helper twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Megee's character recounts the ridiculous comments he has overheard on the job, such as when someone calls Santa a "faggot" or parents discreetly (or not) request a "white Santa" for their velveteen-clad progeny. When taking his breaks, he's forced to wear a smock over his festive costume, a purposely garish ensemble by Georgianna Londré that includes a thick white HO on its rear end. The stress Megee's character endures is enough to make one commit hara-kiri in a display window.

Sedaris' and Megee's satiric gifts keep Diaries at just the right pitch; the show is politically incorrect and kind of mean, yet it culminates with an unironic dose of sentiment. The Fuddy Meers lighting-and-sound team of Cady and Kiehl works well with Jon Cupit's spacious set, which includes mounds of faux snow and an animatronic Rudolph. The show produces a pleasant buzz with a candy-cane aftertaste.