J-WALKING

The character of Claire in Fuddy Meers, at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage II at City Center, is described in the dramatis personae as "a generally sunny woman with amnesia." J. Smith-Cameron, the Claire of David Lindsay-Abaire's intriguingly titled drama, is a generally sunny woman without amnesia.

Here's how Claire starts thing off as the alarm clock awakens her for another day in the confused, distorted world that is residue of a deep earlier trauma:

"Hey, what's my name?"... [Looks in a book of reminders that her husband Richard has prepared for her.] "'Good morning, Claire.' Claire. Claire. Apparently my name is Claire. 'I'm sorry you have no memory.' Oh, that's very sweet."

"'To begin your day, put on your slippers. They are located beside the bed'... Oh, so they are. This is so clever. It's like a little scavenger hunt. 'Second, stand up and greet the morning.' Hello, Morning!"

At which instant, a ski-masked figure known as the Limping Man -- "a lisping, limping, half-blind, half-deaf man with secrets" -- emerges from under Claire's bed.

The several other characters are Claire's 60-year-old mother, Gertie, who's had a stroke and talks in sentences like this: "yada tooda pitue oh Za ih da fuddy meers"; Claire's angry, zonked-out 17-year-old son Kenny; her uptight husband Richard; a burly man named Millet, who speaks through a hand-held pupper; and Heidi, a tough babe in cop's uniform. The players are Patrick breen Marylouise Burke, Keith Nobbs, Robert Stanton, Mark McKinney and Lisa Gorlitsky. The director is David petrarca, whose track record includes the exemplary Marvin's Room.

"Nooooo," said blue-green-eyed, reddish-haired J. Smith-Cameron after a day's rehearsal, "I've never known anybody with amnesia, and I don't know anybody like any of the characters in this play. They're all extreme to me, starting with this woman in extremes, who wakes up every day and has to start all over again.

"And yet," she said, with a laugh stirring fond memories of the late Colleen Dewhurst, "Claire is the most normal of all of them. And even though I haven't known anyone with amnesia, I think I can relate to someone blocking something out that's too hideous to remember. Because we're all in denial, aren't we? After you get into it, you forget how crazy and dysfunctional all these characters are, and it feels like an old-fashioned, well-made play, with real feeling between the characters, very romantic and passionate. Not brittle, like so many characters in so many plays today."

J. Smith-Cameron -- J, to friends and colleagues -- who was born Jean Isabel Smith, grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, as Jeanie Smith ("boring story"), started acting as J. Smith and added the "Cameron" to keep Actors' Equity happy. Actors' Equity must also be happy at the amount and quality of work being done by J. Smith-Cameron including her brilliant performances in As Bees in Honey Drown and The Memory of Water, and opposite Matthew Broderick in Night Must Fall.

Then there are movies. "Speaking of blocking things out," she said, with that laugh, of one particular experience. "No, I love making movies, but a play is more about writing, isn't it?" Better recent experiences include "Pyrite", for Lifetime TV, and a cameo in You Can Count on Me, directed by Kenneth Lonergan, the playwright and screenwriter whom she met at Westbeth three years ago and with whom she lives in Greenwich Village.