Seattle Rep Delivers an Intense 90 Minutes with God of Carnage

In the Seattle Rep's production of Yasmina Reza's Tony-winning God of Carnage, an incident of playground violence results in an increasingly chaotic night of childish bickering between two sets of parents. Veronica Novak (Amy Thone) and her husband Michael (Hans Altwies) have invited Alan and Annette Raleigh (Denis Arndt and Bhama Roget) over to discuss a fight between their two sons and suggest how the boys might reconcile.

The 90-minute production has no intermission and is one long scene of the two couples trying to remain somewhat civil as the conversation spirals out of control, thanks to their widely varied backgrounds and viewpoints: Alan is a corporate lawyer whose only interest is keeping his client company out of a lawsuit, while Veronica is an author preparing to write a book on the human rights tragedies in Darfur. Michael is a self-made business man in the home appliances business, and Annette describes herself as being in "wealth management," (presumably, her husband's). Direction by Wilson Milam and costumes by Deb Trout effectively evoke the distinct personalities of the four characters, while Eugene Lee, Geoff Korf, and Matt Starrit coordinate their talents to create a stage setting that genuinely feels like an upscale condo in downtown Seattle, where this version of the play is set.

As the evening unfolds, it becomes clear that the couples have very different perspectives on what happened between the boys and what the appropriate response should be. Tempers flare and subtle prejudices eke out, inciting further discussion and eventually descending into flat-out attacks from everyone, against everyone, on both sides. It's fascinating to watch small alliances form and drop between the different people as the topics shift, and ultimately, you get the sense that this is a play about relationships: the relationships between men and women, parents and their children, husbands and wives.

While the play employs weighty issues such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, and our moral duty to other humans as a vehicle to drive intense debate and set up comical interaction between the couples, you get the sense that it's no more than that: a mechanism to move the play forward. After 90 intense minutes of exhausting emotional turmoil, there's no feeling that any of the characters have grown or that anything has been resolved. The play ends as it began, with the couples at an impasse about their children, seated around the living room coffee table.

The lack of resolution may be an intentional commentary on the inherent difficulty of dealing with other people, but it results in a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Some of the particularly emotionally charged barbs such as Annette's seething description of Veronica's son as a "faggot" and Michael's offhanded slur about "Sudanese coons" in Darfur felt like segues into further examination of white upper-middle class society's attitudes towards homosexuality and racism, but instead came off as cheap tricks calculated to shock the audience when the comments died without acknowledgment or discussion.

Despite this, the play overall was a thoroughly enjoyable look at the familiar insanity of parenthood, family, and differences in perspective. Whoever you are, you're sure to find pieces of yourself in at least one of the four, wildly diverse personalities on stage, and it's great fun to watch the arguments unfold and pick your own side at each turn of the ongoing discussion.

God of Carnage runs nightly Wednesday-Sunday through October 24th, and tickets can be purchased online at the Seattle Rep's website.

Seattle Repertory Theatre // Oct. 1-24, 2010 // Tickets $12-$50 (varies by seat)