Theater Review—

An Entertaining ‘God Of Carnage’

By Julie Stern

HARTFORD — Yasmina Reza is a French novelist and playwright whose most recent work, God of Carnage, was a smash hit on Broadway, winning the Tony award in 2009. Now, in a real theatrical coup, Steve Campo, the artistic director of Hartford’s TheaterWorks, has succeeded in gaining the rights to putting it on here in Connecticut, only the second licensed production since the original (the other one opening last month in Seattle).

So if you wanted to see it in New York and didn’t get the chance (or didn’t want to pay $100 for a ticket) now is your chance. TheaterWorks Hartford is offering the production until December 19.

As directed by the multi-talented Tazewell Thompson, this account of two couples who meet to discuss a playground incident in which 11-year-old Benjamin Raleigh hit 11-year-old Henry Novack, and knocked two teeth out, is often very funny, as we watch four highly civilized adults deteriorate into total savagery.

As the veneer of gracious manners peels away, various characters throw up, hit each other, use language that has led the management to impose an arbitrary 14-year-old age limit on admission to the theater (which is clearly ironic to anyone who has ever ridden a middle school bus) and in one glorious incident, a woman drowns her husband’s offending cell phone in a vase of tulips. (The audience broke into spontaneous applause.)

That said, the play is reminiscent of a sitcom. It draws its laughs from the clash of personalities, and lots of physical humor, which the actors carry off quite well, especially Susan Bennett as the mother of the offending moppet.

On the other hand, nobody really learns anything; there is no great insight or meaning. Reza wields her skill in exposing the layers of discontent and resentment underlying the polite facades, but at the end, nobody has changed or grown.

When they get really tired, like two kids scrapping on the playground, they run out of steam. It is easy to visualize them back on the set in the same time slot next week, to begin a new episode of Married with Children…

Should you go to see it? Well, it is entertaining. Along with Bennett, Candy Buckley, Wynn Harmon and Royce Johnson go at it with vigor and venom, but they’re still smiling at the end. It’s like Edward Albee light. Think Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf as a comedy.

Many in the audience gave it a standing O, and you definitely won’t be depressed when you come out of the theater.