Susan Granger: “God of Carnage” (Bernard Jacobs Theater: ‘08-‘09 season)
Now this is what Broadway’s all about: a new, gleefully nasty dramatic, emotionally supercharged comedy by French playwright/novelist Yasmina Reza, translated and Americanized by Christopher Hampton and interpreted by four incredibly talented and superbly cast stage-and-screen thespians: Jeff Daniels (“The Squid and the Whale”), Hope Davis (“Synecdoche, New York”), James Gandolfini (“The Sopranos”) and Marcia Gay Harden (“Mystic River”).
When the curtain goes up, Alan (Jeff Daniels) and Annette (Hope Davis) have been summoned to the apartment of Michael (James Gandolfini) and Veronica (Marcia Gay Harden) because, on a playground in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, Alan and Annette’s 11 year-old son hit Michael and Veronica’s son with a stick, permanently damaging two of his teeth. While arrogant Alan and anxious Annette are, at first, conciliatory and apologetic, sipping espresso and devouring artsy Veronica’s apple-and-pear clafouti with grumpy Michael’s Caribbean rum, soon verbal barbs soon start flying. Sharply shifting allegiances subtly emerge, along with the airing of dirty marital laundry. Soon polite civility is discarded for hostility as open warfare is declared.
As she did in the Tony-winning “Art,” Yasmina Reza cleverly dissects smug, upper-middle-class superficiality and hypocrisy in a savage world, including Alan’s unrelenting cellphone addiction, while London director Matthew Warchus (“Boeing-Boeing”) deftly balances the farcical ensemble to perfection. Each actor/actress in the quartet has his/her moment of glory and of dismay, artfully augmented by set/costume designer Mark Thompson and Hugh Vanstone’s lighting. Contemporary comedy just doesn’t get any better than this.