Absurdity

As Kopit indicated in the subtitle of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, he was influenced by the "bastard French tradition," meaning the plays of the avant garde Parisian dramatists, some of whom, like Beckett and Ionesco, were expatriates living in France. Elements of the absurd include highly exaggerated, dysfunctional familial relationships, which is most notably present in the play in the maltreatment of Jonathan by his mother, whose overprotectiveness is simply destructive.

There are many other absurdist elements in the tragic or black farce, however. Among them are the surrealistic, nightmarish motifs, including the ever growing Venus flytraps and the body of Mr.Rosepettle, which not only falls out of its closet at a most inconvenient time but also, momentarily, comes to life to grab Jonathan's ankle and trip him. There are also the absurdist anomalies, like the...