Review: GOD OF CARNAGE, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre

Adults irrationally turn into children in this explosive pressure cooker of a black comedy. After one of their kids hurts the other, the four parents meet to discuss the matter in a civilised manner, but heir conversations escalate and branch out into jabs about gender roles and violence. Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage won a handful of Tony Awards as well as an Olivier in 2009 and was then adapted for the screen a few years later by regular rapist and known abuser Roman Polanski with a starry cast. Christopher Hampton’s translation is back in London after a brief stint in 2018 directed by Nicholai La Barrie featuring some trims and revisions.

The company is exquisite at being ruthlessly and unapologetically rude, but, as the couples try to one-up each other in the subtlest of ways, their hostility grows tediously pointless and the play increasingly trite. Dinita Gohil and Ariyon Bakare are Ferdinand’s side and guests of the couple. Proud and arrogant, Bakare portrays a man riddled with badly concealed misogyny and a colossal air of self-importance. His incessant phone calls relating to his hot-shot legal case interrupt the congregation mid-sentence, enraging his wife Annette. Played by Gohil with sophisticated pique, she is quiet and subdued, trying the path of reason until she comes out of her shell and crashes down on all of them.

The less-than-appeasing hosts are in the hands of Freema Agyeman and Martin Hutson. One eccentrically histrionic and the other puppy dog-eyed and initially meek, they stoke the fires of the whole silly thing. Agyeman is a proper treat, grabbing the air and waving her fingers with subtle sarcasm while fiercely defending her son’s honour. Their arguments are a feast of engrossing second-hand embarrassment and pedantry for the benefit of the audience. We’re witnesses to their unravelling and battles of semantics. Awkward scuffles and loud pride lift the veil of the absurdity of living, while the double-faced nature of human pleasantry emerges through comical non-humour and ferocious comebacks.

Ultimately, they’re all ridiculous people. La Barrie sets the scene on an imperceptibly revolving platform designed with tasteful French minimalism by Lily Arnold. The actors are encased by darkness, plucked from any physical ecosystem, and put on display like works of art - or wild animals. Short musical indentations mark the turning points and the immediate changes in tension, a lovely but lazy choice to guide the public. While the parents lose their grip on the catalyst they’ve gathered to discuss, a bigger problem starts to show.

Their conversations branch out into shallow observations on the state of the world, briefly touching on the role of fathers in the family, morality, and the importance of justice. These subjects are never truly explored, but linger like discarded pieces of small talk. It all comes down to the fact that the characters are just stereotypical figurines dressed in glamorous clothes. The nagging wives stand opposite to their careless and often distant husbands while their children are invisible presences that don’t get to speak for themselves.

It’s good fun, but the last half hour of the 90 interval-less minutes drags. The dissection of their personalities and attitudes towards society doesn’t really go anywhere either; it’s an amusing, hyperbolic, melodramatic cut-out of a pretentious dispute between well-off fantoccini made to detonate in a controlled environment.

God of Carnage runs at the Lyric Hammersmith until 30 September.

Photo credit: The Other Richard

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