The White House Murder Case

Synopsis

An unpopular war. An effort to find a fall guy after a disaster. Cover-ups and lies emanating from the highest levels of the White House. Sound familiar? A satirical gem a week before the next US Presidential election. Jules Feiffer's hilariously lethal political satire on the hypocrisy of American politics and militarism was called a 'killer farce' when it opened in1970 during the Vietnam War. It is still topical and relevant. Feiffer skewers the political climate: Operation Total Win is a total loss for the USA in their war against Brazil. Not only that, against the Geneva Convention, the troops have brought experimental nerve gas with them into battle - for research purposes, of course. When the wind blows in the wrong direction, it kills 750 US troops. Since it is election year, the President calls his cabinet to help spin a story about the incident that the American public will swallow.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 15 October 2012

New York cartoonist Jules Feiffer (still working and teaching at 83) wrote two scabrous plays at the end of the 1960s, one a black social satire, Little Murders, the other a send-up of political bumbling and fall-out after a fictional "friendly fire" disaster in the Vietnam War, The White House Murder Case.

The first was directed successfully for the RSC in London by Christopher Morahan, who now revives the second at the Orange Tree 40 years after its premiѐre, perhaps aiming to catch a mood of the forthcoming US Presidential elections; the play’s President, Emmerson Hale, has just six weeks to sort out two big problems before the polls open.

First: who was behind, or responsible for, the blowback of nerve gas that has wiped out hundreds of US soldiers in the Brazil jungle; and second, who has left a murder victim draped over his desk in the Oval Office, speared with the shaft of a golf driver and flying a “Make Love No...

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