Customer Reviews

The God of Carnage: A Play (Ff Plays)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As I write this (May 26, 2009), "The God of Carnage" by Yasmina Reza is a huge hit on Broadway and has numerous Tony nominations. As in "Life X 3" the dramatist has assembled four people in a room, two couples Veronique and Michel Vallon paired against Alain and Annette Reille. The Reille son Ferdinand has struck eleven-year-old Bruno Vallon with a stick and knocked out two of the boy's teeth.
Two couples arguing over a children's playground fight? No, that would be too easy for Reza. It's a contest that drags in the state of the two marriages, the attributes and characters of all four adults. It becomes a war of wills, probing the fabric of their lives and lies.
It's fun to watch these four people destroying themselves and each other as battle lines are drawn and redrawn. The insults they throw at each other are priceless. Loyalty to one's spouse becomes a disposable commodity. Spouses turn on spouses; new alliances are formed and dissolved. Vomit plays a role in the farce so be prepared. There are some very funny lines. Michel says, "Puking seems to have perked you up."
Both men show off their macho credentials by boasting about being gang members when they were kids. Bruno is accused of being a grass (informer). Michel becomes a "murderer" because he has gotten rid of the family's pet hamster, Nibbles, on the street. All of them are self-indulgent yuppies who easily get off the subject of the kids and into their yuppyish issues. Alain, a lawyer, is constantly talking on his cell phone until someone puts it out of commission.
It's a very clever, focused play, full of laughs. The play owes something to Absurdist traditions. The dialogue at times is inane and absurdist, ridiculous. The way the trouble intensifies is like the proliferation of chairs in Ionesco's famous play. The verbal slaughter that takes place on the stage makes clear the title. Deep meaning and insights? No, but, yes to stripping bare the pretensions and inner feelings of four self-absorbed spoiled adult brats who are probably raising monsters like themselves.

I saw the stage play "God of Carnage"and throughly enjoyed it. The dialogue between the four characters was so interesting I had to read the written play, The interchange of ideas by their open discussion was wonderful. Reading the script brought more meaning to the play.

"[Are] we interested in anything but ourselves? Of course we'd all like to believe in the possibility of improvement", says poor Alain, one of the four characters in Yasmina Reza's play "The god of carnage". He may be naïve for a single moment saying this, but deep down he - and probably the French dramatist - do not believe in the possibility of improving the human being.

Alain, his wife Annette, and the couple Véronique and Michel, are clear example of the well meant bourgeoisies whose blindness do not allow to see beyond their belly tummy. The answer to Alain first question is: not. No, they - and for extension we - are not interested in anything but themselves. The excuse for the gathering is each couple's child behavior - one of them has hurt the other with a stick. This is said in the first lines of the play, but what arises after a couple of minutes is the inherent nastiness that inhabits the inside of each of us.

Reza's strong dialogues - translated with pitch perfection by Christopher Hampton - exposes above all her characters' moral fragilities. They are like a quartet playing a game whose winner is the one who best betrays his/her companions. For that they pair up with somebody else from the other couple, but, in the end, each is playing for on his/her own.

What is it to be a parent? What is it to be half of a married couple? Are there rules for one live in society? How to fulfill other people's expectations towards us? Or, as a matter of fact, should we? There is a lot of irony in "The god of carnage" because we behave as others expect us to, and rarely show our true colors. They criticize the children's behavior and are hoped to teach them how to behave. But how can they do that when they themselves behave worse?

I was ecstatic to be able to see a performance of "The God Of Carnage" on my first trip to New York last fall having previously had the privilege of acting in an amateur production of 'Art'. As soon as I got home I sought out a copy to own. It is a wonderful work that captures the breakdown of 'political correctness' between two couples attempting to resolve a schoolyard conflict between their respective sons.

Top marks!

I had continued to see sparkling reviews of this, Yasmina Reza's newest work. I was familiar with, "Art", which I found to be nothing more than three stars, but since this ran on Broadway featuring a number of actors I highly respect, I decided to read it in a bookstore before purchasing.

Glad I did.

Now, despite the fact I gave the play a rating of two stars, it is NOT a "bad" play, and hell, it's even entertaining, but I must ask a question we must all ask of any sort of literature: what's the point?

As far as "The God of Carnage" goes, nothing.

Two couples fight over their kids, throwing back and forth insults sometimes witty, sometimes not, in a well translated (but not without it's occasional slip-ups) French piece by a French playwright who's notably French works can't help but be really French in nature ("The Bald Soprano" shout-out!). While the couples hurl insults - and one of them hurls the contents of her stomach (an entirely unnecessary action), the play seems to drag as it progresses, changing subjects from the kids to the parents themselves. Now, this is a nice little idea, but nothing really INTERESTING is said, and no transformations occur in the characters that give the conflict a POINT; unlike in "Art".

The play is fast paced and sometimes funny, but as the reviews stated, the show was really made great on Broadway by the wonderful cast and excellent direction (as I heard most of the play was physical comedy). Too bad it doesn't translate to the written page; if anyone cares what I think, I'd venture that Neil Labute's "Reasons to be Pretty" was better than this.

Yasmina Reza is one of the world's most insightful and philophical playwrights of our time. And the translation by Christopher Hampton is magnificent.

This is a great show and worth the read and seeing it on stage! This script - the popular version - is translated from the original French. It is very similar to the Broadway show, but not exactly.

For writing a believable and sometimes humorous play about the way many Western adults might respond when their son's front teeth are knocked out by another 11-year-old boy, I give the playwright two stars.

Young Ferdinand Reille destroyed the teeth of Bruno Vallon, in a schoolyard fight. When Mom and Dad Reille meet Mom and Dad Vallon to discuss the matter, the wronged Vallons are, in my opinion, admirably cordial, kind and polite -- and remain so for quite some time, despite the tooth-and-claw attitude Mr. Reille displays from the first.

Eventually, however, as Mr. Reille continues to badger the group with his baboon-like behavior, the civility of the other three begins to break down.

I get the distinct impression that Mr. Reille's view of human nature/culture is the playwright's view - a view not only wrong, but dangerously so, a belief that we humans are no better than wild animals, that we lack brain structures allowing us to interact with each other in ways labeled "civilized."

Mr. Reille, a lawyer fighting to sell drugs harmful to humans, fights also to hide the fact that his drugs harm humans. Mr. Reille is also opposed to teaching his son that knocking someone's teeth out is wrong -- since (he says) African children kill people, sometimes dozens a day, before they even reach the age of his Ferdinand.

The Western military-industrial complex wants the world to think like Mr. Reille. "Humans are born violent," they say. Why do they say this? Because if we believed otherwise we'd stop buying their guns, tanks and killer planes. Poor tykes would lose trillions overnight.

The fact is, however, dozens of peaceful peoples exist in the world (despite the fact that the rest of us have been grinding them into the dust for the past several millennia). And before 4000 BC, there was no institutionalized war or violence -- the evidence for this is overwhelming.

The lie that humans are born violent is one of the most dangerous lies alive on the planet today. Because if enough of us believe it, there's no hope for ending our LEARNED violence.

Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future

This is full of fun and silliness, fast quipped dialogue and a few serious moments. It is not a play to sink anything into but it is enjoyable and an audience will have a good time. Light is always welcome.
Linda Loveland Reid, author of Touch of Magenta.

I really enjoyed this play, but was somewhat left at a loss with the ending...I do recommend this reading and loved the images and sense of humor in it!