God of Carnage: Yasmina Reza returns to the OLT with her award-winning critique of the middle class
Photo: Maria Vartanova
By Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton; Ottawa Little Theatre ; Directed by Chantale Plante
At one point in Yasmina Reza’s incisive, award-winning comedy about social hypocrisy, a father comments that his 11-year-old son is “a savage”.
The savage behaviour in question is a playground fight in which he hit another boy with a stick, breaking two of the other child’s teeth.
Now, the two sets of parents are meeting to discuss the incident. The initial awkwardness, punctuated by long pauses, is soon replaced by increasingly uncivil and uncivilized behaviour revealing the insincerity and ugliness in the married couples’ relationships with each other and with their opposite numbers.
The references to Neanderthals in the script, coupled with the back projections in the excellent Ottawa Little Theatre production and the intentionally ragged form of Graham Price’s set underline how little progress human beings have made over the ages. As the couples group and regroup in alternating pairs, each exposes his/her true nature, from insincerity through lack of caring to downright cruelty, demonstrated by the brutal abandonment of a hamster.
Like Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Reza’s God of Carnage focuses on the barbaric side of human nature. (It is noteworthy that she points to cellphones and the exploitive attitude of pharmaceutical companies as very much part of the new barbarism.)
As directed by Chantale Plante, the carefully wrought OLT production maintains a fast pace, while still making effective use of Pintersque pauses, insincere smiles and non-verbal marital communication. The characters, clearly defined by the well-balanced cast of four, are enhanced by Susan MacKinlay’s costuming, which adds another layer of separation between the two couples.
Cindy Beaton, as Veronica, moves smoothly from apparent sweetness to revealing her main concern for her artistic endeavours and delivering frequent digs at her blue-collar, slobbish husband, Michael, well characterized by Allan Ross. Meanwhile, Jane Chambers, as Annette, who handles the extremely difficult vomiting sequences most effectively, also shows increasing distaste for her lawyer husband, Alan. As Alan, Patrick McIntyre is appropriately more concerned with his phone conversations, his dessert and the rum that Michael provides than the playground fight that was the reason for the unlikely social gathering in the first place.
While Reza’s initial premise does not really explain the need for the meeting or Veronica’s written statement about the fight, the 90-minute drama as presented by OLT is a splendid and highly entertaining ending to Ottawa Little Theatre’s 103rd season.
Set: Graham Price
Lighting: Frank Donato
Sound: Bob Krukowski
Costumes: Susan MacKinlay
Cast:
Veronica…………………………………..Cindy Beaton
Alan……………………………………….Patrick McIntyre
Michael……………………………………Allan Ross
Annette……………………………………Jane Chambers