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'God of Carnage' hilariously trashes civility
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'God of Carnage' hilariously trashes civility
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA,AP Drama Critic AP - Monday, March 23
NEW YORK - Calling Miss Manners.
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Civility gets thoroughly trashed _ along with a few other things _ in "God of Carnage," Yasmina Reza's hilarious yet surprisingly thoughtful comedy that has brought James Gandolfini to Broadway after his enormous success on television in "The Sopranos."
Here Gandolfini is a team player, one of four actors who do superb ensemble work in a verbally and physically volatile production directed with precision by Matthew Warchus.
The play, which opened Sunday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, has been adapted from the French by Christopher Hampton. For Broadway, he's transplanted the story from Paris to what appears to be upper middle-class Brooklyn where two sets of parents are meeting to discuss their young sons' park brawl. The problem? How to defuse the situation in which one lad got two teeth broken.
Easier said than done, particularly when the couples' seemingly polite, ever-so-rational discussion starts to go off track. Fueled by that ultra-bourgeois dessert known as clafouti and generous amounts of liquor, the discussion rapidly descends into a free-for-all that not only pits couple against couple but husband against wife.
Gandolfini plays Michael, a deceptively quiet wholesaler of household goods; Marcia Gay Harden is Veronica, his altruistic, artistically inclined wife. In the opposite corner are Jeff Daniels as Alan, a crude, self-absorbed lawyer who's permanently attached to his cell phone, and Annette, his mousy wife, portrayed by Hope Davis with delicious self-effacement that hides a simmering rage.
Reza's play is brief, barely 85 minutes, but it packs a lot into those increasingly heated exchanges. The actors have expertly tapped into Reza's sense of heightened reality, a reality reflected in the production's stylized, red-carpeted living-room set (courtesy of designer Mark Thompson) framed by a blindingly white proscenium.
"Carnage" is not Gandolfini's Broadway debut. He had small roles in the 1992 revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and 1995 stage adaptation of "On the Waterfront." The actor holds his own against the other performers, playing a character not dissimilar from Tony Soprano, even down to the fact that he is intimidated by an ailing mother.
The real revelation of the evening, though, is Harden, usually seen in much more somber roles such as her Oscar-winning performance as Lee Krasner in the film "Pollack." In "Carnage," she undergoes the play's most startling transformation _ from quiet, considerate woman concerned about such tragedies as Darfur to a bellowing harridan who's not above throwing a punch or two. It's one of those swell, showy comic portraits that has Tony nomination (and probably the prize, too) written all over it.
Usually nice-guy Daniels is cast against type as the abrasive lawyer who is preoccupied during the whole meeting with one of his clients, a medical company that could be facing some serious liability issues. It's a delightfully snarly performance, exuding a combativeness that's ready for any fight. And, boy, do they arrive.
Not only with the other couple but with his wife, whose propriety, as portrayed by Davis, eventually gives way to a physical vindictiveness that is deliriously funny to observe. Watch, for example, what the actress does to two bowls of tulips artfully arranged on stage.
Credit for much of the show's giddy forward motion should go to the director. Warchus is something of a Reza expert, having directed many of her English-language productions including "Art," "Life (x) 3" and "The Unexpected Man." But nothing in those previous efforts, prepared us for the almost balletic displays of movement that are on display here.
In "God of Carnage," Reza demonstrates a keen, satiric understanding of middle-class values _ and the pomposity that often comes along with them. Yet she is a moralist, too. When values fly out the window, what's left to take their place? Apparently a world where brute force or the law of the jungle triumphs. Fortunately, in this sparkling production, laughter brilliantly accompanies the wholesale destruction.
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