God of Carnage

Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage in London starring Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer, Ken Stott.

What happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behaviour of their children? A calm and rational debate between grown-ups about the need to teach kids how to behave properly? Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums and tears before bedtime? Boys will be boys, but the adults are usually worse – much worse.

"A crackling night of electrifying comic acting" The Daily Telegraph

Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage is translated by Christopher Hampton and directed Matthew Warchus with desigs by Mark Thompson, lighting by Hugh Vanstone, sound by Simon Baker and music by Gary Yershon.

"Terrific stuff. Yasmina Reza's fizzy new satire on spoilt middle-class couples" The Daily Mail

"God of Carnage is a hoot. Stripping the mask off the polite bourgeois face to reveal the snarling animal beneath, Yasmina Reza’s standard trick, is hardly original, but it’s entertaining... A cruel and sparkling text is helped by four immaculately dovetailed performances, finely controlled by Matthew Warchus’s direction. Christopher Hampton has again translated [Yasmina Reza's] work (brilliantly) into a knockabout English satire" The Sunday Times

"God of Carnage is an expert piece of stagecraft and savagely funny"
The International Herald Tribune

"It's no surprise (and not just because the title tips you off) that God of Carnage turns on the idea that adults are no more evolved than kids, that the bourgeoisie, groomed and courteous on the surface, are beastly underneath... She's astute, is Reza. Her dialogue is often fraudulent but it's also sprinkled with legal-like wit. Her often languorous action is punctuated by sure-fire devices... The very faintness of the characterisation is a spur to actors, to show what they can do. A lot, as it happens... Christopher Hampton's terrific idiomatic translation turns every insult into an elegant joke." The Observer

"A triumph! Brilliantly translated by Christopher Hampton" The Daily Express

"This contemporary French farce, vibrantly translated by Christopher Hampton, is really a black comedy of degenerating manners... This dramatist's seriocomic writing can, indeed, be rather like a dodgy electrical connection: it sporadically falters, suddenly looking over-schematic, its grander themes crassly spelt out... Nonetheless this is a fierce and very funny satire. It's like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? crossed with Alan Ayckbourn and it will surely be a big hit." The Independent on Sunday

"I found myself delighted by Yasmina Reza’s incisive observation, her acerbic wit, her shrewd humour and her stunning cast" The Times

"Blisteringly funny as the piece is in Christopher Hampton's elegant translation, it stops short of the merciless laceration of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? - theatre's most celebrated booze-fuelled marital slugfest. That is partly because Reza's ideas seem to be imposed on, rather than emerging from, her characters. Nor, as Albee succeeds in doing, and as Reza presumably intends, does the play become a metaphor for the decline and fall of Western civilisation. Instead, with her razor-sharp wit, Reza exposes the hypocrisy of the educated middle classes and the corpse that is their married life... Matthew Warchus's production sparks with high-voltage performances." The Mail on Sunday

"All four actors excel in Matthew Warchus’s deft production which is full of delights" The Guardian

Yasmina Reza was partly inspired to write The God of Carnage following a conversation she had with her own son: "One of his friends had had his tooth broken by another boy. The mother of my son's friend complained that the boy's parents hadn't even rung up to apologise. I don't know why but something just clicked."

Matthew Warchus, the director of God of Carnage in London, says: "What appeals to me about Yasmina Reza's plays is that she picks a tiny subject or situation, and from it reveals universal truths. She somehow manages to write epic drama from a miniature position... The kind of drama she's interested in is a world in which somebody vomits, or somebody draws a skier on a white painting, or enters a room and overhears something that they shouldn't have. In a way her plays remind me of Chekhov's."

This production of God of Carnage in London reunites the entire award-winning creative team behind Yasmina Reza's hughly successful play Art which run for over six years in London's West End.