Yasmina Reza, the French playwright, is the author of the enormously successful Art. God of Carnage, her witty black comedy, translated by Christopher Hampton, is a satire on bourgeois values, parenting skills and rocky marriages.
Two 11-year-old middle-class boys have a fight. One of them, clobbered with a stick, has lost two teeth. His face has also been disfigured. Their parents meet to discuss the matter. Boys will be boys but adults prove to be much worse.
Freema Agyeman and Martin Hutson are cast as one couple. He has just dumped their daughter’s hamster in the street and left it to fend for itself. She is a tiresome moral crusader.
Ariyon Bakare and Dinita Gohil are cast as the other couple. He is a boorish corporate lawyer, who spends most of the time on his mobile talking business. She spends most of her time being sick and makes a mess of floor, table and a precious book.
Tempers quickly flare and their behaviour becomes more and more hysterical, more and more insulting, more and more degrading. Any chance of reconciliation and co-existence rapidly disappears.
God of Carnage is a metaphor for the decline of civilization. The art of coexistence is hard. The art of reconciliation is even harder. We crave for peace and stability yet we are all savages at heart.
Poorly directed by Nicholai La Barrie and not well enough acted, Reza’s play no longer seems as good as it did in its London premiere in 2008. Playing it straight through in 90 minutes without an interval is a BIG mistake. The last twenty minutes are interminable.
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