Review: 4th Story Theater's GOD OF CARNAGE

Eviscerating modern manners and mores with surgical skill and startling focus, playwright Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage is among the most popular contemporary stage comedies of the early 21st century. Now onstage in an altogether agreeable, yet unsettling, production from Nashville's 4th Story Theater at West End United Methodist Church, the play - a searing indictment of pretentiousness and political correctness among the upper crust - remains just as provocative and entertaining as it has always been.

Credit goes to director John O'Brien McGuire Jr., whose capable cast brings the story to life skillfully. McGuire's direction ensures that none of his actors resort to the easy out, instead remaining focused on the story at hand, telling it with genuine affability despite the inherent differences among the two couple at its center.

McGuire's ensemble stars a quartet of committed actors who seamlessly become the characters created by Reza: Christopher Bosen, Brittany Nelson, Adam Horn and Jill Braddock-Watson meld together effortlessly, giving voice to Reza's darkly comic lines to display the playwright's razor-sharp wit with a sense of gleeful theatricality.

The setting - updated by MdGuire to take place in an upscale condo located in Nashville's hip and happening Gulch district - becomes contemporary Nashville, prompting a change in some of the lines to evoke images of our hometown's "It City" status that, while initially proving somewhat distracting, is sure to make audiences squirm in their seats in the same way that the overall plot always has. But, if anything, setting the play in Nashville makes the story related by Reza more potent and discomfiting. Because you are likely to know people just like her fictional characters - they populate your own life, whether you realize it at first or not - they make you blanch at much of the dialogue, your cheeks reddening from the realization that you've heard people from your own circle of acquaintances expressing many of the same thoughts.

Thus, Reza's already razor-sharp dialogue becomes more cutting as delivered by McGuire's astute ensemble of actors. Reza spares no time in laying waste to the urban landscape in which four well-heeled American parents meet to discuss a playground altercation between their two sons, which has resulted in one boy brandishing a stick to knock out two of the other boy's teeth. While the parents have come together to reach an understanding of what happened between the two boys to bring them to contretemps, they hope to find some common ground in order to move on. But all good intentions quickly devolve and the differences between the two couples quickly cause the meeting - replete with coffee served up in fashionable demitasse cups and a meticulously prepared apple and pear clafoutipand - to descend into expletive-laced chaos.

Despite its archness - and make no mistake about it, any drawing room comedy worth its salt is arch - God of Carnage is tremendously engaging, thanks to McGuire's deft direction and the actors' confidence in portraying characters who are rather unlikable.

McGuire's quartet of actors seize the opportunity to dig into an exquisitely rendered contemporary comedy in order to deliver performances that are shockingly real and off-putting. While they could be considered caricatures of contemporary parents - filled with theatrical buffoonery - they somehow manage to retain enough authenticity to make them consummately believable.

Bosen and Nelson play off each other gracefully as Michael and Veronica, the parents of the victimized and toothless boy, self-assured in their interactions and presenting the image of an upwardly mobile couple. Nelson delivers her lines with utter commitment, making each seem as if it's issuing forth from her own mind. Bosen seems barely contained in his raging disbelief of the situation in which he finds himself, setting up a tension-packed ambience that supports the intentions of Reza' script.

Playing opposite them, Braddock-Watson and Horn underscore their performances with a likability that at first appears incongruous to their characters. As the parents of the aggressor, Braddock-Watson's Annette and Horn's Alan are the epitome of upper class entitlement (particularly Alan, a high-priced lawyer who is constantly on his cel phone, thus dashing any hopes of détente among the quartet).

The four actors play among themselves so seamlessly that all disbelief can be easily suspended, each performance crafted under McGuire's direction to ensure that every audience member becomes the proverbial fly on the wall to witness the disintegration of etiquette, manners and gracious living - and everything else considered holy by well-heeled Nashvillians - during one hopeful afternoon gone decidedly off-course.

• God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza. Directed by John O'Brien McGuire Jr. Presented by 4th Story Theater at West End United Methodist Church, Nashville. Through May 15. For details, go to www.westendumc.org. Running time: 90 minutes (with no intermission).

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