‘Murders’ Is an Update Ill-Timed

Some say that Jules Feiffer’s “Little Murders” was ahead of its time when it opened on Broadway in 1967 and closed one week later. A near-absurdist comedy set in a good neighborhood besieged by round-the-clock gunfire was apparently not funny to audiences who presumably lived in that neighborhood or one like it.

The play centers on the nice Newquist family of Manhattan, people who learn to serve dinner, raise children and host events such as weddings even while snipers shoot right through the windows. The Newquists are very edgy, make no mistake. They even lose a child or two to random gunfire. But life goes on, and good Americans that they are, they find a way to participate in the culture around them.

It may sound as if “Little Murders” could today be read as a parable about the National Rifle Assn. or as a metaphor for the innocent American despised abroad. But, as it turns out, the play clings firmly to its time. In a new production at the Odyssey Theatre, director Ron Sossi attempts to set the play to an unspecific present. References to Carroll O’Connor, “Rocky,” Iran, Iraq and body piercing are sprinkled in. But the update is only cosmetic, and it de-fangs this play.

Despite its initial failure on Broadway, “Little Murders” belongs to the late ‘60s, to the full flowering of urban paranoia, to a time of soaring crime rates, assassinations and a lack of trust in leaders who sometimes seemed insane. Without the context of the Vietnam War and ambient civil unrest, the play loses its bite.

Sossi tries, not always successfully, to ignite the play’s bright, absurdist fire. As Mr. and Mrs. Newquist, Tom Lillard and Jacque Lynn Colton seem to base their combustible parents on sitcom types (“All in the Family” comes to mind) rather than on reality. More real--and more successful--is Kenneth Dolin as Alfred, the passive photographer who plans to marry the Newquist daughter Patsy (an also good Erin Noble), a lovely tyrant who in her bossiness has found a way of responding to the world around her.

Christian Gossett is sweetly dopey as a hippie minister entrenched in dubious love-in wisdom. His very funny scene, and the peace signs around his neck, make it very clear that this play needs its time as context.

Now, after a long, steady diet of apocalyptically violent American films, the landscape of the Newquist family seems almost tame. Aside from the gunfire, the family must cope with a cross-dressing son and a heavy-breather who phones constantly. After a decade of receiving automated sales pitches at dinner time, theatergoers may now find a heavy breather almost charming.

*

“Little Murders,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m., except Sept. 13 and 27, 2 p.m. only. Ends Oct. 4. $18.50-$22.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.