Merry Mayhem in Sedate Yuppie Land

The God of Carnage

Reviewed by Cindy Nemser

First Row Center Blog

After a significant dry spell Yasmina Reza, best known for Art, her witty spoof of contemporary doodling, has done it again. However, this time she turns to hectic pantomime, most expertly performed by an amazingly adroit cast of four. She also uses rib-tickling jibes, to rain down hilarious destruction on the exquisitely tasteful digs of Michael (James Gandolfini) a wholesaler and Veronica (Marcia Gay Harden) a writer who is a specialist on African culture and currently writing a book on the genocide in Darfur. Their living room, part of a domicile in gentrified Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, is the height of yuppie understated good design, with a sleek white sofa and low black moderne coffee table. That coffee table, as well as the rest of the room, is overflowing with art books that broadcast the fact that Veronica is a highly cultured woman and to further indicate the civilized code that she and her husband Michael live by. To further express their rational liberal sentiment there are also two elegant vases filled with blooming fresh tulips in water and a home made dessert of clafouti to be served with espresso for the expected guests: Annette (Hope Davis) a wealth manager and Alan (Jeff Daniels) a corporate lawyer. However this charming but spare furniture is set upon blood red carpet and in the background is a mud-colored cracked wall that resembles the traces left by a volcano after a terrible explosion. This scenario, by the gifted Mark Thompson, who also did the costumes, is a brilliant visual warning of the mayhem what the God of Carnage has laying in wait for these disastrously matched people as the expected guests are the parents of an eleven-year-old boy who hit their eleven-year old son with a stick and broke two of his teeth, one a molar. 
The quartette begins their interaction with admirably low voltage conversation, neither parents asserting they wish to cast blame or take seriously the antics of their obstreperous offspring. Indeed, Alan (Mr. Daniels), who just wants to forget about the incident, blowing it off as high spirits, immediately sets Veronica’s (Ms. Hardens) teeth on edge. The attorney also begins to infuriate the rest of the group including his seemingly put upon wife Annette (Ms. Davis) by constantly taking cell calls involving salvaging the damages brought about by suits against a major pharmaceutical miracle drug that has proved to be a disaster. Michael (Mr. Grandolfini) big and cuddly, at first appears good-natured, even willing to come to an amicable settlement of some sort but his wife, Ms. Harden isn’t having anything but justice, and after the desert is served, infuriated by Mr. Daniels’s indifference and Ms. Davis’s ineffectuality she demands some sort of reparations.
At that point the God of Carnage really begins to show its hand. Ms. Davis barfs all over Ms. Harden’s highly prized art books, and begs forgiveness with wide, cow-eyed shame. Her husband ignores her sad state and just keeps taking cell phone calls that eventually put her into a state of fury. She snatches the offending machine and tosses it into--guess where. Tulips, water and vases scatter in merry disarray all over the room. Mr. Gandolfini, at this time is frantically trying to dry one of the art books with a hair dryer but to no avail. His useless gesture just makes his wife even more enraged and she insults him. Now he too takes off the velvet gloves. He informs the other parties, especially his wife and Ms. Hope, that he doesn’t give a damn for their bleeding hearts and relates how he put a pet hamster out on the street to fend for itself even if it died because he had a fear of rodents and couldn’t bear even to touch one. Just like the mud cracks on the wall the veneer of civilization begins to crack among these four. Old grievances come to the surface. Ms. Harden and Ms. Hope are fed up, for many different reasons, with their husbands and their spouses mirror their feelings in one way or another.
When rum is exchanged for coffee and clafouti, the boxing gloves come on and physical, slapstick comedy is king. Ms. Hope continues to throw up into a basin she has retrieved from the bathroom; Mr. Gandolfini starts pushing his wife around; she wrestles him for a bottle of booze. Later she climbs on the back of the aggravating Mr. Daniels, in her opinion the minion of the capitalists who are indifferent to the fate of the African people of Darfur. And when it comes to the defense of their boys it is one couple against the other, but the next minute it is a regular boys against the girls show (think of the Lucille Ball show and the Honeymooners and then Punch and Judy.)
Ms. Reza’s play is no “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” but though it is basically bereft of an intricate plot, it is much more than just a sit-com. There is a point to this hilarious 90-minute farce. It uses marvelously orchestrated hilarious movement exacted by the brilliant director Mathew Warchus and four stunning actors as a means of completely desiccating the outer appearance of the civilized, morally observant life. Though, by a certain point in our existence, most of us realize that a large portion of the human race lives by the rules of dog eat dog while that same group pretends that “do unto others is their only creed,” it is necessary to be reminded that that is often the way things are and there is often not much a person alone can do about it. We can only try, even if it hurts, to make things better. Bless Yasmina Reza, and a terrific ensemble of performers, especially Ms Harden for making the bitter pill go down with a great deal of laughter. Mary Poplins sang, “a little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way.” Ms. Reza’ proves that mirth is still one of the best forms of sugar.