Review: 'God of Carnage'

God of Carnage, written by Yasmina Reza, is a play about two sets of parents having a big argument over an incident that happened between their children at school. The play succeeds in challenging the aura of respectability and solidity of your average middle class family while questioning the ideas of certainty, justice and childhood and the effects that adults can have on children. It is a play with absurdist pacing with spikes of chaos separated by eerie calmness. It is also a play very difficult to get right.

Where the director Rory McGregor triumphs is his obvious talent for getting the most out of his cast. It has become clichéd to talk about ‘chemistry’ between actors but Mungo Tatton-Brown, Helena Clark, Max Fitzroy-Stone and Claire Curtis-Ward feed off each other with such ease that the phrase becomes mightily appropriate. God of Carnage is definitely an actor’s play. With such simple set design, the audience relies on the actors to express themselves and to keep the pacing quick and snappy. The moments where Curtis-Ward and Fitzroy-Stone were subtly insulting each other was a joy to behold because of their understated yet savage delivery.

The acting in this play becomes more difficult due to the development each character goes through. At the start, they keep things hidden and feel each other out, playing the part of the concerned parent and part of a stable marriage. The mood changes are often sudden and intense, which is always risking alienating the audience but this play did not suffer from such shortcomings.

McGregor did a fine job at using the bare stage to its full effect. The couches were situated very close to the audience, which created a more intimate feel while the phone was situated far away from everything else, which meant the scene would totally change in dynamic when somebody answered. Though the couches were the focal point, there were times when the characters would disperse, usually during arguments. It meant the play never became stale, which was something the film version could more aptly be accused of. McGregor has outdone Polanski it seems.

God of Carnage is one of the finest plays I’ve seen at the Drama Barn and all four leads are deserving of plaudits. This is exactly the kind of play that DramaSoc should do more often with its interesting characters, short running time and cheap set. It is of little surprise that it has achieved national acclaim and has been entered into the National Student Drama Festival, where I’m sure it will continue to gather admirers.