Extremely bad behavior has taken over the mainstage at South Coast Repertory with “God of Carnage,” a new mounting of a boisterous 20-year-old comedy of ill manners.
Playwright Yasmina Reza’s middle-class cast of four brew, and gleefully quaff, an amoral spew of modern age self-preoccupation.
A likeable quartet? Not remotely. But actors invested in squeezing every raucous drop out of verbally tearing each other to bits? Indeed!
In 2009-2011, when the show debuted on Broadway and then came to L.A., it was a must-see extravaganza largely because of its starry cast, klieg-light led by the then superstar wattage of actor James Gandolfini, newly off his immortalizing TV role as mob boss Tony Soprano.
In SCR’s production, with strong direction and an oh-so-right cast of stage actors, we get a clearer look at the work beyond the original fuss for the show.
Dan Donohue and Melinda Page Hamilton appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) From left, Melinda Page Hamilton and Kim Martin-Cotten appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) Brian Vaughn and Kim Martin-Cotten appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) From left, Kim Martin-Cotten, Melinda Page Hamilton and Dan Donohue appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) From left, Dan Donohue, Melinda Page Hamilton, Kim Martin-Cotten and Brian Vaughn appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) From left, Brian Vaughn, Melinda Page Hamilton and Kim Martin-Cotten appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) Show Caption1 of 6Dan Donohue and Melinda Page Hamilton appear in a scene from “God of Carnage,” on stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 21. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer, SCR) Expand“God of Carnage” turns out to be intoxicating, albeit toxic, entertainment. Social bile drives 90 minutes of back-and-forth savage bickering.
The animated arguing is notably rooted against a backdrop of White privilege, seasoned with, among other aspects, dollops of sexism and racism.
Ultimately, one character among the four, desperately clutching at any pretense of civility, concludes: “Courtesy is a waste of time, it weakens you and undermines you.”
Nobody would mistake Reza’s farce as remotely courteous. Instead, these conversational cage match exchanges are simply funny as hell, pitting married couple against married couple, husbands and wives turning on each other and un-merry-go-rounds of three characters periodically ganging up on the fourth.
On opening night, there weren’t amused titters or ironic chuckles from the audience, but brayed barks and gut-bust laughs rolling out of the seats.
“God of Carnage” offers no great profundities or pronouncements of hope. It certainly offers no promise of character change, much less growth.
This is because, as Reza doesn’t just admit, but matter-of-factly reports, in a program note written by SCR’s longtime dramaturg Jerry Patch, “I’m not cerebral. I never theorize about human nature. My work is visceral and subjective.”
The premise: a fifth grader hits another boy with a stick on the school playground, breaking two teeth. SCR’s production nicely foreshadows at the top with a blacked-out stage, and, for 20 or 30 seconds, just the piped-in sound of kids noisily playing, with the slightest single voiced “Get him!” heard as the schoolyard volume peaks.
In the aftermath, theater lights go up, and we see the children’s parents, previously unknown to each other, gathered at one of their homes.
Ostensibly, it’s to see if they can make the kids get along. Initially, espresso for all is served, a homemade dessert is lauded and design choices in the house and art books on the coffee table are admired.
But all veneer of polite sensibilities among the four — innately recognizing each other’s successful upper middle-class status — shatter rapidly (and that’s well before guzzled swigs — at first in glasses and later straight from the bottle — of “exceptional” rum).
The directorial challenge at hand for Marco Barricelli would seem to be establishing nuanced pacing for the snide personal interchanges between the four actors as well as tapping the performers’ choices to broaden out the characters.
This is all carried off very well. What could descend into one-dimensional over-acting and cartoony yelling, expands into a train wreck of misbehavior driven by recognizable if not laudable individuals with unrepentant flaws.
The four actors together commune as a savage pack, but the individual choices they make are compelling, especially as events devolve.
As Michael, a bathroom and kitchen fixture wholesaler, Dan Donohue’s performance is riveting in its expansion from awkward diffidence to unbridled savagery while revealing his inner core. At the beginning, Donohue is reluctant but willing to play the gracious host, but he gradually, but assertively becomes a provocateur.
Melinda Page Hamilton plays Michael’s wife Veronica. An especially appealing aspect of her performance is the character’s physicality. Early on, Hamilton is a self-possessed, her carriage underscoring her as an arbiter of social good, the gracious hostess. Then, abruptly, she is thrashing around on hands and knees trying to desperately clean up a household mess. By the end of the show, arms flailing, she’d raining down a beatdown of punches, physically assaulting her husband.
(A delightful aside in the program from Hamilton in making her SCR debut: 33 years earlier her father, Frank Hamilton, appeared in the theater’s legendary original production of “Prelude to a Kiss” in 1988.)
As Alan, Brian Vaughn makes a satisfying unctuous, oily attorney, sneeringly dismissive of the children’s hoo-haw he’s been roped into negotiating. The actor is constantly pivoting away from the other three, obsessed with a series of cell phone calls involving a shady deal he is damage controlling. Ultimately, it’s only the nightmarish fate of his phone that causes Vaughn to list into slumped resignation.
Kim Martin-Cotten’s impactful presence as Annette (no one seeing it will forget the fallout from her dessert consumption) is especially intriguing to SCR followers since she held a highly visible position as Associate Artistic Director from 2021 to 2025. But elsewhere, her long experience as an actor is on display. She’s a terrific progression of conveying brusque brittleness that is logical before de-evolving before our eyes into a raging, unleashed urban Amazonian.
On the technical side, SCR presents a handsome production.
Regina Garcia’s lovely living room scenic design features a few subtle period touches. An unseen mother of one of the characters ringing in repeatedly on the house landline is one visual clue.
Lighting director Josh Epstein bathes the action in a warm glow, and then neatly at play’s end slowly brings on a harsher, flattened illumination of the four characters, who are now physically remote from each other after all the emotional carnage they have generated and absorbed.
This show runs in repertory through the end of March in tandem with a mounting of another play about two couples and marital discord, the fabled “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which opens later this week.
This Edward Albee work from 1962 also features Vaughn and Martin-Cotten. If “Virginia” turns out as well as “God of Carnage,” the advice here is to see both.
‘God of Carnage’
Ratings: 4 stars (out of a possible four)
Where: Segerstrom Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa
When: Through March 21. 7 p.m., Wednesday; 7:30 p.m., 8 p.m., Thursday-Friday; 2 and 8 p.m., Saturday; 1 and 7 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: Regular performances: $59-$122
Information: 714-708-5555; www.scr.org
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