Review

THE GOD OF CARNAGE

Director : Nadir Khan
Writer : Yasmina Reza
Cast : Shernaz Patel, Anu Menon, Sohrab Ardeshir, Zafar Karachiwala

THE GOD OF CARNAGE Play Review


Deepa Punjani



 THE GOD OF CARNAGE Review

Yasmina Reza's play THE GOD OF CARNAGE (also made into the film 'Carnage', directed by Roman Polanski) is a black comedy in which two sets of parents meet each other over a fight their boys have had in a public park. This seemingly simple premise is effectively turned into a situation where all gloves come off - the parents themselves are left exposed of their frailties, and of their own, underestimated ability to wreck damage. This drawing-room play is a comic-styled expose of marital relationships and of that great, ideological battle between civilisation and barbarity. Reza suggests that we may be polite as hell, but 'The God of Carnage' is steeped in our Biology. This of course is arguable in the scheme of the Social Sciences and human adaptability, but nevertheless, there is a degree of truth in it. From the play's point of view, it offers an interesting proposition of drama to which performances by its cast are tantamount.



Q Theatre Productions (QTP) in association with Aadyam (a theatre initiative by the Aditya Birla group) has produced the play. Its casting could not have been more appropriate; Shernaz Patel and Sohrab Ardeshir play the couple whose boy has been hit while Anu Menon and Zafar Karachiwala play the parents of their child who has struck. Patel, Ardeshir and Karachiwala are old hands at English theatre in Mumbai but English theatre in the country has always been in a quandary when it has come to foreign plays, resulting in a series of shortcomings - one of them being the varying accents of its actors, when played staright-up. Adaptations and translations sometimes minimise this hurdle.

At once in this production, you hear a medley of accents, as well as tonations, that deliver the first blow to an otherwise well-intended piece of theatre. But we have come to grudging terms with this fact, learning to accept it as part of the larger territory of English theatre in India, unless it's an original Indian English play. The dynamics of language and patois are then different.

Yet overall, Ardeshir is the only exception in this set of four whose performance leaves some impact, especially as he finds himself implicated by Annette (Anu Menon) and his wife (Shernaz Patel) over his daughter's pet hamster. Sadly and disappointedly, there is no deeper connect or resonance that the other three actors communicate. There is a studied maturity that they bring to their roles but their personas loom larger than the characters they are meant to play. The couples are socially poles apart, but were it not for the obvious indicators of profession and dress, this important element in the play might well have been unexplored.

Nadir Khan's direction is brisk, allowing a good pace for its turn of events that manage to hold attention. In its favour, the production does not slack and the drawing-room is at least transformed in appearance; though its modern, contemporary design (by IOD Consultants) is characterless, in that, it has nothing much to say that this is the home of a middle-class, small-time businessman and his academic wife. Were it not for the flurry of activity that gets underway in the play or for that rare instance in which the actors have managed to articulate a modicum of their characters' psyches, this production would have been entirely unremarkable.

*Deepa Punjani is the Editor of this website.


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