Sick laughter in 'Murders' reflects times

By Peter Bellamy "Little Murders." that outrageously funny but grim social satire and picture of uncontrolled violence in our cities. is back with us at Berea Summer Theater.

And, as directed by Jack Winget, its emphasis is much more on its jet black humor than it was in the New York production. This is just as well, for while there are moments of bizarre hilarity, it is depressing in retrospect.

The play's vocabulary is rough and not for conservative tastes. There is much violence and the ending is macabre and tinged with insanity. The sound track presents the noise of bombs, rifle shots. sirens and screams of pain.

This Jules Feiffer drama envisions a metropolis like Cleveland or New York in which there are hundreds of unsolved murders. housewives go armed while shopping and power failures are so routine that people automatically light candles without comment.

Regardless of one's preference in theater. the cast is excellent. Winget's direction is fast and many if not all the younger people in the audience found the play the occasion for unfettered frivolity.

Having seen himself and his children experience the hippie, rock 'n' roll and pot stages of this era, as well as the irrational violence and tragedies of the sobering '70s, this observer also derived gallows laughter from the show.

The scene of the play is an apartment. which has been turned into something ó f an armed camp, what with obscene telephone callers, possible robbers at the door and muggers and murderers in the streets.

If the family in the story is paranoid there are reasons for it, especially since one of its members has been killed for no reason by an unknown assailant.

The father as played by Jack Milo thinks anyone who earns less than $10.000 a year is a social menace and should be forced to undergo a lobotomy.

The mother. played by pretty Mary Dooley, lends the character an addlepated quality of overdone "momism." which explains why her stage children are emotional disasters.

The daughter. portrayed by Patricia Gill. a young lady of commanding vitality and femininity, is a cominating figure who loves her fiance for the kind of man into which she'd like to mold him.

As her fiance, who changes from muggers' delight into a sadist. James Anadel for most of the play is a daydreaming scared rabbit at the mercy of a black widow spider.

In view of his dramatic heredity and environmer:. Jeff Smith evokes compassion as well as laughter as the homosexual brother who disappears with his sister's wardrobe.

Richard Hellman as the detective with delusions of persecution is hilarious, as is Douglas Goger in the role of the hippie clergyman. who thinks that faithfulness in marriage is an invasion of privacy.

Robert Holmes also provides black laughter as the prototype of a choleric reac tionary. Tila, muen oi tne

play's laughter probably reflects the times. Anything for a laugh.