You need some kind of armour to watch this production, for it is not called God of Carnage by accident. About the only thing left standing at the end of the play was the set. 

The actors were exhausted from the verbal blitzkrieg they had waged against each other, and those of us watching were in a state of joyous collapse. We were battered senseless by the onstage antics, but we laughed till it hurt.

God of Carnage is a brutal comedy in which two supposedly nice, middle class couples meet to resolve the outcome of a school yard fight between their boys.

Soon, the family conference descends into a tag-team wrestling match. Then the couples turn on each other, and, before long, the men and the women are ganging up. This side changing is achieved by very skilful writing which is as funny as it is vicious.

In one sense, the play isn’t particularly satisfying. Its premise that civilization is a thin skin you only have to scratch for the jungle to sprout through is prosaic and its exposition of the cultured bourgeois hiding their true selves behind a façade of manners is a well worn theme. Indeed, the theme just seems an excuse for Yasmina Reza to let rip with her distinctive style of shocking comedy.

You will never see actors work harder for their money. The nervous and emotional energy needed for their roles was enormous. Mark Hadlow, Lara Macgregor, Ross Gumbley and Rima Te Wiata are a talented and experienced team and they all came through their wild descent into hell with flying colours.

Though occasionally over the top, even for this outrageous play they certainly gave the audience a memorable experience.
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A new play from the ruthlessly observant French playwright Yasmina Reza is already a compelling reason to secure a seat as soon as possible. Translation is again by the illustrious Christopher Hampton and the play attracted both Olivier and Tony awards for Best New Comedy and Best Play in 2009.

As always, the focus is sharp, throwing into relief the tiny hypocrisies and manipulations of language and perspective which allow civilised behaviour the moral high ground on the subject of violence, while the deeper truths about our motivation and actions are mostly kept under cover. Director Jon Pheloung understands thoroughly the actors’ opportunities and obligations in fleshing out the ideas and his dream cast works with assured finesse. 

We are in an open, elegant Parisian apartment, where two polite sets of parents meet to talk through the aftermath of their offspring’s confrontation. It seems that Ferdinand whacked Bruno, breaking two of his teeth. Even in well-ordered middle class families, these things happen after all.

What is surprising and thus furnishes the meat of the play, is the ever widening web of interpretations, explanations, revelations and eventually emotional outbursts the simple swipe initiates.

Self-made man Michel Vallon is a successful retail merchant. His wife Véronique is a writer currently concerned with Dafur. It is her use of language in a statement describing The Incident which triggers inevitable tensions, drawing the first response from media savvy Alain Reille, lawyer for a pharmaceutical outfit, whose ongoing crisis over a dodgy drug keeps his mobile phone in constant use.

Thus words and their connotations are the hilarious stuff of which the web is spun, until we witness the ultimate breakdown of reason and the even funnier/sadder triumph of action and unfettered emotions.

Annette Reille, seated in a neutral position between her husband and the Vallons, stays calm the longest, but her release when it comes is all the more startling and pleasurably shocking for that. You will have to see the play to appreciate the full impact.

As the couples test co-existence and sweet reason, allegiances form and re-form. Husband/wife loyalties fray as man to man and woman to woman understandings develop and sometimes it is just the individual who is left holding the thread of logic or illogic. On the way, this articulate play touches base with the wider world where unthinkable goings on in Dafur are not so far removed from the self-serving manipulation of ‘civilised’ drug promotion in the Western world.

Thanks to the wit and vividly dramatic business onstage there is no sense of a lecture here, only engaging humanity doing what it does, sharpened for our thoughtful pleasure. The cast, as anticipated, bring richly textured characters to the experience.

Mark Hadlow, is memorable as the marker of the ‘ordinary’ world, initially loose limbed and affable, working to scarlet faced frenzy, carrying the world before him on that wonderful jutting jaw.

Lara Macgregor has fearless physicality in her role as Véronique, “standing up for civilisation,” as she puts it, until the rum kicks in and real feelings kick out.

As Annette, Rima Te Wiata negotiates a similar path, her polite mask and restrained beginnings passing through passionate fury to rag doll exhaustion as the frustrations of moderation and mediation take their toll. 

The professional neutral Alain, played with fine control by Ross Gumbley, has the complicating factor of his incessant phone calls to attend to and when this is silenced forever, we are left with the telling image of techno-man unplugged. 

The creative team too has a significant hand in the triumph of the production. Tony Geddes (set), Brendan Albrey (lighting) Hamish Oliver (sound) and especially Jenny Cunningham (costume) furnish the environment in which Reza’s world is substantiated.

Her God of Carnage provokes huge laughter in the theatre even as we recognise the unfortunate human qualities she feeds on and the irony of so many high minded words. 
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