“We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior.” -Tennessee Williams
Tonight in Studio 1, the liberal principles of two married couples were torn to shreds before my very eyes in 80 short minutes. Of course, this spectacle was in the guise of a play called God of Carnage by playwright Yasmina Reza, but does that make it any less real? Basement Arts (the source of tonight’s entertainment) is a long-standing student organization, but student organization it nonetheless remains. As such, this means that the quality of the shows they put on is hit-and-miss. “Hit-and-miss” is the nature of all theatre, professional, student, or amateur – but you would be mistaken if you were to suppose that the hits are irreproachable and that the misses are worthless. The directors, performers, and designers for Basement Arts are all students, and this means that, hit or miss, everyone in the room can learn from any kind of performance. In a sense, this is educational theatre – as educational for the actors as for the audience.
Let me first make myself plain: tonight was a success. I have been to nearly every Basement Arts production in the last year, and I must confess myself far more impressed than usual. The scenery was suggestive without being minimalist or reductionist, and I didn’t hesitate to suspend my disbelief. The props were especially clever (particularly the pillow – but I’m getting ahead of myself; we’ll come to that). The momentum of the play was airtight; kudos to director Austin M. Andres on that score. The small cast of four actors had a tough job – Reza’s work is difficult to execute effectively – but I think on the whole it was done right, and done right, the play is monstrously funny and appallingly delicious.
The setting of the play is the living room of Michael and Veronica Valone (Josh Aber and Zoe Kanters). They have invited Alan and Annette Reille (Nick Skardarasy and Emma Sohlberg) over to discuss an incident involving the couples’ sons, who were involved in a physical altercation at a public park. Rather, the Valones’ son was struck in the face by a branch wielded by the Reilles’ son, and the two couples attempt to make some kind of an understanding about it. For a minute or so, all seems civilized – if strained – but soon the pretense gives way to unbounded cruelty. It’s almost like Lord of the Flies, only the people are adults and the “island” is a living room.
Each actor tonight surprised me in various ways, but Skardarasy as the viciously intelligent Alan deserves mention as the stand-out performance of the night. Not once did I doubt the reality of his being. He embodied people I know, people I get along with famously, people I hate – all in the span of eighty minutes. His deadpan comic timing was right on – it was Alan’s deadly seriousness that made him funny, his dry and witty sense of humor that made him loathsome. Certainly God of Carnage was very well cast by a director who knew precisely what he wanted: clear archetypes. Emma Sohlberg was instantly recognizable as the almost Gothically prim wife of harried Alan, presumably a law advisor for a pharmaceutical company currently under scrutiny. His constant incoming phone calls were something of a joke throughout the play. Kanters as Veronica made a convincing self-righteous (and selfish) bleeding-heart liberal, while Josh Aber had a respectable run as her affable, simple, husband.
The genius of this kind of play (and its translator – let’s give credit here where it’s due – Christopher Hampton translated admirably this masterwork from the original French) is that, similarly to Chekhov’s best plays, no one character is the hero or heroine, yet no one is the villain. Still, this isn’t realism. Each character represents all of us, in a way – not entirely a victim, not entirely culpable; but at the end of the day, there is a mixture of pity and hatred for these characters. This is the only way that a play such as this can be successful.
A moment should now be taken to appreciate a part of the play that was so convincing it was almost alarming. Annette, after eating some of Veronica’s cooking, becomes ill, and yes, vomits onstage. Moments like this are so easy to glaze over, to half-ass, or to present apologetically because the director could not find a way to present it without looking foolish and phony. Not so in this case. I am told the vomit was very cleverly concealed inside a pillow that Annette held moments before she “puked.” It actually looked so real that it took a few minutes for me to decide fully that it had indeed been staged, since the characters were moving on with the play and not pausing to inform us that Ms. Sohlberg was truly ill. A very loud hand for this brilliantly conceived moment.
Of course, there were bits that annoyed me somewhat. A couple of times, I felt that the director was reaching for comedy by trying to force a laugh out of a moment that didn’t really warrant one – instead of playing the truth of the characters’ emotions and letting the audience decide when to laugh. This is certainly when the play was weakest. Happily, I can report that these moments were few and overall not corrosive to the rest of the play. Indeed, the truth of moments is what is memorable (Alan stonily quips, “Our son is a savage,” without a hint of bitterness or irony – it’s hilarious); the moments that tried to produce comedy rather than truth were forgettable. Cheaply manufactured “comic” moments rob themselves of humor and rarely make us laugh – one of the great paradoxes of the theatre.
All that aside, though, I enjoyed myself very thoroughly; something of that savage nature displayed in the four characters is awakened in the spectator, who gruesomely revels in the way the couples tear each other to shreds. It’s delightful. One of the greatest structural elements in the play is the way that the characters form and dissolve alliances with the speed of a bullet. Husband and wife wrestle with husband and wife; the next moment, it’s men versus women; at some times, it’s three-on-one. It is probably the most disconcerting and truthful element of the playwright’s storytelling: these are things that we all do. Consciously or not (probably not), we truly are savages competing under the laws of the “God of Carnage” invoked by Alan towards the end.
This is a play where each person starts out with noble intentions, and then for one reason or another, abandons them for the laws of the jungle. It’s important to note that all four people “lose” something important to them: Alan’s phone, his precarious link to his high-stakes job, is drowned in the flower pot by his own wife (she’s made bold by her drunkenness at this point); Veronica’s book is ruined by Annette’s vomit; Michael’s excellent rum is all drunk (again, mostly by Annette), and moreover, his secret phobia of rodents is made humiliatingly public; and by the end, Annette has lost her dignity, reduced to a sobbing wreck (“It’s the worst day of my life, as well”).
If tonight’s show is anything to reckon by, this will be a good year for Basement Arts. Let’s keep these hits coming.
