Halo Productions brings biting social commentary to Toronto Fringe venue the Helen Gardiner Playhouse with Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, translated by Christopher Hampton and directed by Katherine Bignell.
When their 11-year-old son Henry is badly injured by stick-wielding playmate Benjamin, Veronica (Françoise Balthazar) and Michael (Mike Lummis) invite Benjamin’s parents Annette (Angela Froese) and Alan (Stephen Flett) to their home for a meeting about the severity of the situation. The initially civil discussion turns to heated debate, then to violent argument as the adults get caught up in their sons’ playground altercation and reveal their own deep-seated prejudices, neuroses and hypocrisy.
Set in Veronica and Michael’s living room – the minimalist set design all in red, including two vases of red tulips – it becomes clear that Veronica and Alan are the alphas of their respective pairings, while Michael and Annette defer to their spouses, even to the point of mirroring their opinions; but as the action continues, the true natures and attitudes of all are revealed.
The cast does a great job, transitioning from well-mannered and even legal language to insult and cursing as civil conversation turns into drunken living room brawl. Balthazar brings a crisp, fastidious sense of decorum to the highly educated, well-travelled Veronica; and her liberal thinking and good manners reveal an underlying self-righteousness and ferocity. Flett is suitably despicable as the no bullshit, wry-witted Alan; a lawyer attached to his cellphone as an important pharma client deals with the possibility of a drug recall, he puts his career first, but actually does have a heart under all that brutal honesty. Lummis’s Mike seems affable and caring enough at first, a modern-thinking man who eschews violence and is concerned for his son; he soon reveals himself to be a phoney, as his layers are peeled away to reveal a conservative, callous hypocrite with less than friendly opinions on marriage and children, as well as gender and race. And Froese does a lovely job with the mousy, nervous Annette; adrift and put-upon, she is seething underneath and actually mad as hell. Like Mike, she defers to her spouse till she can’t take it anymore – and erupts in a rant about the state of their lives before settling in to intoxicated bliss.
The savagery of modern civilized society in sharply insightful, brutally funny God of Carnage.
God of Carnage continues at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse until July 9. For ticket info and advance tickets/passes, check out the Fringe website.
life with more cowbell 