Cartoonist Jules Feiffer took the techniques of his satirical art and applied them to the stage when he wrote ‘Little Murders‘ in the late sixties. As in caricature, he began with common human foibles and enlarged and exaggerated them to the point where they became both hilarious and devastating.

He is said to have predicted the Me Generation and was the first of the humorists, like Woody Allen and Gary Trudeau, to exploit the neuroses, fears and alienation of the “urban beast” living with the constant assault on the senses in a big city.

Pamela Rabe hams it up in preparation for her role as an all-american daughter in “Little Murders”

Although the play is now regarded as one of the greatest American comedy of the 20th Century, it closed after four shows when it first opened in New York in 1967. Pamela Rabe, the Canadian-born actress and winner of the Green Room award for Best Actress in ‘Gertrude Stein and Companion‘, plays the all-American daughter Patsy. She says that Feiffer’s vision of random violence as a part of everyday life was too close to the bone. Although it received many awards it “got slammed in the press”. (more…)