Reactions were mixed when Sam Mendes launched the first British production of the play. The reviewer in "The Guardian" pointed to "Arsenic and Old Lace" and "You Can't Take It with You" as examples that Americans (in his opinion) had a tradition of works "in which wackiness was a sign of liberating individualism", but that "...it means little to us here." The play also debuted in a traditionally-weak theatre season for London's West End and it closed after only three weeks. Though "Fuddy Meers" was later produced elsewhere in the UK, it never saw the same success it had seen in North America.