ajhlovestheatre

GOD OF CARNAGE

by Yasmina Reza

translated by Christopher Hampton

directed by Nicholai La Barrie

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 30 September 2023

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/god-of-carnage/

A major hit in the West End and even more so on Broadway over a decade ago, partly due to starry casting as the quartet of urban sophisticates whose glossy veneer of civilisation devolves into savagery when challenged, Yasmina Reza’s boulevard comedy-meets-angsty melodrama has not aged well. In Christopher Hampton’s potty-mouthed but only intermittently witty English version, these wealthy, successful couples, forced together because one of their sons has attacked the other, come across as precious, out-of-touch and pretty much insufferable as they bang on about everything from Africa to fine art to whether or not a clafoutis is a tart or a cake.

For this gossamer thin material to work, it needs to be played at a lightning quick pace, with a side order of acid and a lightness of touch that can shade into the seriously macabre when the text demands it. This unfortunately doesn’t happen in Nicholai La Barrie’s leaden production which is neither funny nor stylish enough, and suffers from the bizarre decision to have Lily Arnold’s elegantly minimalist set revolve for the entire interval-less show at a snails pace, which means that there is, at least if you’re sitting in the stalls, always a lamp or a sofa or an actors back blocking your line of vision. This would matter less if the selfish characters were more sympathetic and their eclectic views were worth listening to. They need as much help as they can get to feel remotely relatable or entertaining, but instead this production alienates us from them with every turn of the revolve.

The performances are no less frustrating. Each of the actors has fine individual moments but it feels as though they are striking individual attitudes and poses but with zero connecting dramatic tissue from one sequence to the next. Accordingly the characters feel less like real people and more like a series of shouty, sweary mouthpieces. Considering that they’re supposed to be married couples, none of their relationships feel credible, so busy are the actors bowling their individual bits of shtick at the audience.

La Barrie’s staging has a multi-racial cast but, unlike in Jamie Lloyd’s brilliant new take on Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, currently at the National, the text hasn’t been adapted to reflect that. That doesn’t necessarily have to happen, but it feels a bit strange to have a particularly nasty racial slur bandied about when there are two Black actors onstage, and it goes pretty much uninterrogated. It also doesn’t help that half of the cast seem to have almost no comedy chops whatsoever, either playing the material with deadening over emphasis or throwing it away.

Dinita Gohil excels as the bilious (literally) wealth manager appalled at the social shit-show she is unwillingly cast into the middle of, and makes lovely work out of her drunken last speech evaluating what a “real man” is. Martin Hutson pushes a bit hard initially as over eager host Michael but finds some real comic gold amongst all the bellowing. Freema Agyeman brings a lot of energy to his stroppy partner, and Ariyon Bakare works hard as a lawyer who’s in constant thrall to his mobile phone. None of these characters seem particularly plausible though, and personally I was longing for them all to shut up way before the ninety minutes running time was over.

Ultimately, the biggest problem here is Reza’s text, which is irredeemably shallow, and never as funny or clever as it thinks it is. Without the magnetic brilliance of, say, Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott, who did some major heavy lifting in Matthew Warchus’s original production, God Of Carnage comes across as pretentious, self-congratulatory and, frankly, tedious. The concept of civilised behaviour being a thin veneer over roiling baseness isn’t an original one, and the descent from brittle comedy to vicious farce is handled here with an uninspired abruptness.

The Lyric Hammersmith has, with Accidental Death of an Anarchist (just about to close at the Haymarket after a triumphant transfer), The Good Person of Szechuan and the gorgeous School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play, given me some of my best theatrical nights out in 2023. I guess nowhere can have a 100% strike rate, but this one is a real dud.