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by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton, directed by Joel Greenberg

Studio 180, Panasonic Theatre, Toronto

November 27-December 15, 2013

Alan: “Morally you're supposed to overcome your impulses, but there are times you don't want to overcome them”

The first play of Mirvish Productions second Off-Mirvish season is the Toronto English-language premiere by Studio 180 of God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza.  Toronto first saw Reza’s multi-award-winning play from 2006 in its original French (Le Dieu du carnage) when the Théâtre français de Toronto presented it in 2011 in a production directed by Diana Leblanc.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the TfT production was superior in almost every way to the current Studio 180 production.

As many will know, the play centres on the meeting of two couples after their sons have been involved in a schoolyard altercation.  Benjamin, the son of Alan (John Bourgeois) and Annette (Sarah Orenstein) has hit Henry, the son of Michael (Tony Nappo) and Veronica (Linda Kash) with a stick, knocking out his front incisors.  Alan and Annette meet Michael and Veronica to discuss the situation and decide when and how Benjamin should apologize to Henry.  Although the two couples are attempting to deal with the situation in a civilized manner, tensions soon appear between the couples, within each couple and between the men and the women. 

The first sign of tension comes from the difference in class between the couples.  Alan is an international lawyer, constantly on his cellphone trying to effect a coverup of the negative side-effects of a drug produced by one of the companies he represents.  Annette says she is in “wealth management”, which may simply mean her own family’s wealth.  Michael, on the other hand, is a wholesaler of a diverse range of goods while Veronica is a writer who has published books about strife in Africa. 

The humour of the play is how the animosities so carefully suppressed at the start break out first in innuendo, then direct insult and finally descend into physical violence putting the parents on a plane no different from that of their children.  The question Reza’s play poses is why the civilization we praise seems to be only such a thin veneer hiding our latent savagery.

Christopher Hampton wrote two versions of his translation of Reza’s play.  In the British version, the play retains its setting in Paris and the characters have French names (Alain, Annette, Michel, Véronique with the children called Ferdinand and Bruno).  Studio 180 has used Hampton’s version for the American audience which changes the setting to New York and the Anglicizes, or completely changes the characters’ names.  The main problem with the American version is that the language sounds artificial.  In the French original the characters tend to speak in long, complex sentences.  In the British translation these sentences give the impression of highly educated, or at least pretentious, people having a discussion.  In the American version the language does not sound natural at all, especially when coming from Annette or Michael, who we assume are not as highly educated as their partners.  (By the way, why do all the characters mispronounce the word “clafoutis” as “kla-FOO-tiss”?)  

The second problem with the American version is that Reza’s reference to the US lose their satirical edge.  It is ridiculous when Frenchmen Alain and Michel say John Wayne is their hero; much less so when Americans Alan and Michel say so.  When Véronique refers to France being a civilized country, she taps into an image France has had of itself for centuries.  When knee-jerk liberal Veronica speaks of America being a civilized country it doesn’t ring true since she of all people would be aware of America’s history of violence. 

As for the Studio 180 production itself, the women are far better than the men at controlling the escalation of their characters’ anger.  Linda Kash is hilarious as Veronica, beginning with a schoolmarmish politeness that treats Alan and Annette with so much deference that we can sense the distrain underneath.  She is most successful at gradating her outbursts, first in asides to Michael to get him to shut up  until she drops her politeness altogether and by the end is throwing Annette’s belongings about and hitting Michael with a pillow.  Perhaps her funniest moment is when during a shouting match she answers the phone and speaks to her daughter in the same nicey-nicey tone she used at the start, as if nothing had happened.                        

Sarah Orenstein misses the self-absorption that made Tara Nicodemo’s Annette so funny at the TfT.  Yet Orenstein is excellent at showing us, first through gestures then verbally, how she dislikes being in the shadow of her obsessively cellphone-using husband.  Once she has totally embarrassed herself by throwing up in public, she seems ready to retaliate against anything that annoys her, including Michael and Veronica, though she makes us feel her attacks on them are still attacks on Alan by proxy.  Her finest moment is when after rampaging through Michael and Veronica’s living room she sinks into a fit of sobbing and sounding a note of utter sadness that helps give this satire its depth.

In this play where the humour derives from revealing what was hidden, it is crucial that the actors give us a glimpse of what their characters are hiding right from the start.  Kash and Orenstein do this, but John Bourgeois as Alan and Tony Nappo as Michael do not.  Bourgeois gives the impression that his constant phone calls are an interruption of his meeting with Henry’s parents.  In the TfT production, however, Christian Laurent made it clear he was glad to take all these business calls as an escape from a family discussion he clearly felt was a waste of time.  Bourgeois also does not tinge his polite conversation with Michael and Veronica with enough sarcasm that would point to his real view of them that emerges later.

Tony Nappo completely misses the hilarious passive-aggressive nature of Michael that Olivier L’Écuyer brought out so well in the TfT production.  It would be very easy for Nappo to show that Michael is as bored with this conciliatory meeting his wife has arranged as Alan is, but he makes Michael’s enthusiasm appear genuine so that his later reversals come as a surprise.

The play running 90 minutes without intermission, needs to be directed as if it were a piece of music – an 85-minute-long crescendo really with a five-minute decrescendo at the end.  Instead, director Joel Greenberg gives the play a very uneven pacing where the action often comes to a complete halt before picking up again.  This method has the negative effect of exposing the mechanics of Reza’s play that requires her to find new excuses to keep Alan and Annette in Henry’s parents’ living room long after they have said they have to go.  Sleek pacing as in the TfT production makes one overlook the artificiality of Reza’s structure.  Greenberg’s rough pacing, in contrast, only highlights this artificiality.  We can’t get caught up in the flow of a comedy if the comedy isn’t flowing. 

People who haven’t seen the play before or Roman Polanski’s 2011 film version, will want to see a play that has been a hit around the world, even if it has arrived in Toronto in English after every other major city has already seen it.  Those lucky enough to have seen the TfT production can rest assured that they have seen a subtler, better directed and clearly more authentic version than the one currently playing.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (from top) Linda Kash as Veronica and Tony Nappo as Michael; Tony Nappo, Linda Kash and John Bourgeois. ©2013 Josie Di Luzio.