RAVE REVIEW from Charlotte Theatre Magazine

2/11
Little Murders
BareBones Theatre Group and StageOne Productions at SouthEnd Performing Arts Center – SPAC, Feb. 11-22
by Allison West

out of 5

Allison West can be reached at allison@charlottetheatre.com

Watching Jules Feiffer’s Little Murders, one is struck by the notion that this could be an untapped episode of The Simpsons. In this bitingly satirical, pitch-black comedy, events and sight gags take place that are so absurdly unlikely that, in a twisted turn, they become completely probable, richly uncomfortable and acidly funny.

BareBones Theatre Group’s wickedly inspired stab at middle-class dysfunction is drawn as sharply as Matt Groening’s vivid vision of a hilarious and vexing society. The show plays at BBTG’s new SPAC through Feb. 16. It’s sweetly ironic that Feiffer is one of the world’s most influential editorial cartoonists (through his work in The New Yorker), sparing no one in his scathing visual commentary. In Murders, he tackles a New York City burgeoning with snipers, burglars, muggers, murderers and thugs. The violence and threat of violence permeates the day-to-day life of the Newquist clan, a family that puts the nuclear in nuclear family. They light candles and continue converstions amid constant power outages, answering the phone repeatedly to a heavy breather who seems as much a part of the family as the rest of the maladjusted brood.

Director George Gray has deftly assembled a pitch-perfect cast for this endeavor, particularly by tapping the pocket-size Annette Gill as Marjorie, the off-the-wall matriarch whom Gill portrays with ultimate comic flair and delightful Edith Bunker-ish oblivion and high-pitched cluelessness. Marshall Case is nicely attuned to the outrage of patriarch Carol, who’s thisclose to hysteria and also, the play briefly suggests but fails to explore, perhaps just as close to his towering, domineering daughter, Patsy (Jennifer Foster). Foster’s large-and-in-charge attitude works in tandem with a sudden turn of self-doubt, brought on by her hulking, nihilistic photographer fiancé, Alfred (Matthew Corbett, whose modulated performance is striking next to the blazing neurosis of everyone else). Patsy, who has unsuccessfully tried to reform a parade of gay boyfriends, is trying to make an apathetic Alfred feel and fight; he hums while getting the snot kicked out of him at every twist and turn, waiting until his offenders tire and run off.

Rounding out the family is the weakest link, Travis Creston’s Kenny, a quiet, pierced punk who uses the bathroom a lot and is outed by a nonconformist, half-baked minister (Kevin Campbell, who swiftly delivers the juiciest of three comic monologues; in the first, a Jewish judge played by Ted Weiner kvetches a lot about God but ditched me somewhere along the freeway of religion, and in the last, Hugh Loomis, as a lieutenant burdened with solving 1,312 murders in six months, doesn’t deliver either the requisite paranoia or lack of concern).

Given the Big Apple locale of the play, Gray has all his actors valiantly wearing mostly authentic Noo Yawk accents, especially Foster and Gill, whose grating pitches and tones are in keeping with their archetypal, cracked personalities. Case and Corbett take noble turns, while Creston’s questionable accent stumbles further when he comes out of yet another closet, literally. Gray also handily imitates a perfectly noisy atmosphere of streets assaulted by sirens, horns and gunfire, creating a world so loud you don’t hear it anymore, leaving out only the smell of a rotting city and its souls. (Except, of course, for the cigarettes. May I suggest clove?) The Gray dynasty all has a hand in the production: Hallie’s abrupt lighting imitates the randomness of life, and Sandra’s (and George’s) set design is efficient and quirky, with its nondescript furniture and disturbingly red walls.

The play shifts on a seismic plate just after the start of Act II, losing none of Act I’s fluidity yet managing to pick up the pace with a jaw-dropping sucker punch. After that, the Newquists develop an “If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” mentality, revealing that the family who slays together stays together, much to our morbid delight.

While Feiffer’s comedy may seem dated given Rudy Giuliani’s new decidedly Disney-friendly NYC, the threat of violence that currently permeates the world in which we live creates a universal setting that, with props to Gray and Co., remains pungently and unsettlingly funny.

Things Fall Apart, Take Two
Sharp satire still resonates

BY PERRY TANNENBAUM

Thirty-six years ago, when satiric cartoonist Jules Feiffer cast his jaundiced eye on his native New York, envisioning a city engulfed in anarchy and chaos, he wasn't prophesying a civilization besieged by suicidal terrorists, shoe bombers and madmen who could whip up bombs from fertilizer. No, his 1967 Obie Award winner, Little Murders, conjured up a more Yeatsian disintegration -- things falling apart from within, undermined by apathy, ignorance, insensitivity and prejudice.As you'll see in the current Stage One/BareBones Theatre co-production, there are also fiery harangues tossed into Feiffer's corrosive comical stew. Finally when the sickness festering in the Newquist household reaches full blossom, beyond paranoia, a new rifle is unveiled and family members take turns at their window targeting strangers in the crosshairs, learning to shoot by killing.

Seeing is a large part of the pleasure in this production. George Gray has designed an impressive set for the first fully staged production at the new SouthEnd Performing Arts Center, one that fills the funky stage yet resonates with the elder Newquists' claustrophobic closed-mindedness. Gray also directs more busily than usual, a huge plus in this neurotic rat hole.

But on opening night, all cast members weren't equally acclimated to Gotham. Annette Gill has done a tugboat load of Neil Simon and Arthur Miller scripts, so she's right at home as the ditzy Newquist matriarch, Marjorie. Can't say I remember Marshall Case immersing himself in Brooklynese before, but his irate take on papa Carol has the right Archie Bunker spice.

Jennifer Foster makes a pleasing debut as the tall, eager-to-please daughter, and Matthew Corbett has some fine moments as her mountainous, taciturn fiance. A few more performances should boost her confidence and help their chemistry. Who knows, given a few more fly-bys, Travis Creston might even home in on the Tri-State area. Last Wednesday, the veteran Tarradiddle Player's accent was tracing grand circles ranging from New Orleans to London.

With bullets flying through streets and windows, it's hard to look far into the future in the world of Little Murders. In fact, with all the Con Edison blackouts plaguing Feiffer's New York, even the present is elusive.