I’m not sure what to tell you about God of Carnage because the primary
criticism I
would level at it is so self-evidently the point of the experience that
it’s a
little bit like criticizing a dog for walking on all fours.
The
new play by French playwright Yazmina Reza,
translated and Americanized by UK playwright Christopher
Hampton, directed by Matthew
Warchus—the team behind the
wonderful Art—is about a meeting
between
two sets of parents. The young son of Alan (Jeff Daniels) and Annette (Hope Davis) has hit the son of Michael (James
Gandolfini) and Veronica (Marcia
Gay Hardin) with a stick,
causing him to
need some dental work. So the couples meet—Alan and Annette in Michael
and Veronica’s living room—to discuss the matter and settle up so that
both financial debts and social graces are acknowledged. It’s all about
resolving conflicts in a civilized fashion, isn’t it?
And
of course it all has to devolve, doesn’t it? From the first utterance
of a
slightly judgmental phrase and the “What’s that supposed to mean?” it
elicits,
you can just tell (if the concept alone hadn’t been your gimme) that
the image
at the close will be far less tidy than the image at the start.
Ms.
Reza is smart enough not to make the class distinctions too overt or
too neat.
Though Alan is a sharkish corporate lawyer and Annette a wealth
manager, the
wife resents her husband’s omnipresent cell phone. And while Veronica
is an
author and historian, her husband Michael is a wholesaler of bathroom
supplies,
pretty
much a blue collar guy in a white collar shirt. So it’s not only the
battle
lines between couples we’re
going to
observe, but the less overt battle lines among couples that will also be crossed, as
loyalties
shift, tempers flare and assiduous manners degenerate into farce. (In
fact, as
I write this, it occurs to me that God of Carnage is very much in the vernacular of Alan
Ayckbourn’s
best comedies about social and familial breakdown, if not as artfully
subtle in
construction.)
And
there’s my carp, if indeed carp it be: that God of Carnage, by nature of its very setup, can go only
one way, and
then unabashedly and with abandon goes there. And everything about it
tells you
it shall, from the title, to the opening tableau of forced civility to
the show
logo, a child’s line drawing of a flattened kid.
So
the consideration, beyond whether that inevitability intrigues or
disinterests
you, is how well it goes
there. And in that
regard, this Broadway iteration is about as high octane as it gets.
Between the
director’s gift for comedy and the commitment of the actors to play it
for real
stakes, not a shred of “giveaway” that they’re doing comedy, save
impeccable
verbal and physical timing, the clear mechanism of God of
Carnage is camouflaged just
enough that it’s never dull, and
you can revel in subtle touches—at which Mr. Gandolfini in particular,
seems adept, as he humors the visitors, humors his wife, and slowly
loses the
veneer that shields a man secretly terrified he’s out of his social
depth.
God
of Carnage is no match for Art…but unlike Life x 3, The
Unexpected Man and A
Spanish Play, others of Ms.
Reza’s work seen in NYC, it’s no so far
a cry removed as to seem conspicuously inferior. Where Art was brilliant, even dazzling, and
original, God
of Carnage is only very good at
the
particular, somewhat familiar game it chooses to play.
But
give it this much at a minimum: the packaging is clearly labeled…