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Regional Reviews: St. Louis God of Carnage Also see Richard's reviews of The Wasp and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
"That set's kind of big," I sighed to myself, taking a seat. After all, it's such a small story, just four people, still in the prime of life, hashing out a childish scandal. But there you are, looking down on scenic designer Rob Lippert's large "yield sign" of a diagonal floor-plan on stage, with a similarly huge maelstrom of modern art hanging there on the wall–for a play where two fairly normal American couples (in this version) gradually refuse to yield to anybody. "And the lighting overhead seems awfully sparse," I added with an inward groan. But it's still quite a bright comedy, in more ways than one. Soon enough, director Guterman's four actors are racing around that spare, elegant living room till they've woven a huge, invisible God's eye of psychological fretwork for us all. Lighting designer Jayson Lawshee-Gress's final, luminous effect crashes down on you at the end like Godzilla's thunderous foot, casting an entirely different spell in the final moments. Till then, open-minded, egalitarian theatre turns into something resembling a huge right-wing wrestling match. I can't promise an outrageous masterpiece like this will heal the nation. But we do see things in an entirely different light after all that chaos. The exceptionally thoughtful costumes are by Michele Friedman Siler, as the clash of primal willfulness and modern day high-mindedness grows especially grand in this Brooklyn living room in the present day. Two groups of parents meet to come to an agreement after one of their boys has hit the other with a piece of wood, knocking out two incisors in a good old-fashioned schoolyard fight. But the biting teeth gradually grow back, at least in the parents, in spite of all their social veneers. The four adults are pulled into their own kind of ruthless sandbox, like victims of some reverse generational curse. Christina Rios is brittle and breathtaking as Veronica, and the shock of not getting her own way shivers through her like a Looney Tunes character who's been hit in the face herself. The play by Ms. Reza, a French playwright of Jewish descent who's equally celebrated for her comedy Art from 1994, first hit the boards in 2006 at the 1892-built Schauspielhaus in Zürich. After its London debut in 2008, God of Carnage opened on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre the following year, winning the Tony for Best Play. And nobody would bat an eye if you called Ms. Reza a modern-day Molière. The Novaks, in this English translation by Christopher Hampton, are played by the increasingly shocked and less and less gracious Ms. Rios and Joel Moses, and the Raleighs are brought to life with steadily rising recklessness by the usually adorable Bridgette Bassa and by Nick Freed–an actor who easily sheds his own "nice guy" image here. An infamous scene of physical illness in the play is wickedly choreographed into an epic ordeal, thanks to Ms. Bassa and the rest. We start out in a seemingly perfect world of stratospheric niceties and bottomless sensitivities. But everything goes off the rails as soon as one couple stops salving the bruised egos of the other. A bottle of rum leads to predictable results, and though everyone starts out talking like experts in child psychology, the two couples' children are never actually seen, not even in family photos. Mr. Moses becomes like some giant, crackling Tesla coil of pent-up frustrations as Michael, after falling under the sardonic cross-examination of Alan (Mr. Freed), a high-powered lawyer. And we don't have to wait long before their white-hot relationship comedy turns into a furious cycle of delirious mayhem. God of Carnage, produced by the New Jewish Theatre, runs through June 28, 2026, at the Jewish Community Center, #2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis MO. For tickets and more information, please visit www.newjewishtheatre.org. Cast: * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association Production Staff: |
