Utpal K Banerjee finds the acid dialogue of Aadyam’s God of Carnage burn through the veneer of smug, bourgeois respectability, with alternately comic and uncomfortable consequences
Yasmine Reza (born 1959) has been a sensitive playwright and novelist whose impressive oeuvre reflects upon the contemporary middle-class in a sardonic and satirical manner. Born of a mixed parentage — with a Jewish Iranian pianist-father of Russian descent (whose family left Moscow after the Bolsheviks came to power) and a Jewish Hungarian violinist-mother from Budapest, Reza must have been aware of the strong European turmoil since childhood and exposed to the conflict rife in ideologies, politics and social habit. little wonder then that her plays and novels have gone on to win accolades on both sides of the Atlantic.
Her 2007 play, le Dieu du Carnage (God of Carnage), came out of an actual incident in her own life. The play was a success in its original French version and has been equally acclaimed in English-translated productions in both london and New York. Since then, it has been performed in Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Chile and even United Arab Emirates, apart from being made into a 2011 film,Carnage, by Roman Polanski.
The God of Carnage, presented recently by QTP from Mumbai at the Aadyam festival, was under the baton of the veteran theatre-person Nadir Khan. Two 11-year-old children, Ferdinand and Bruno, get involved in a scuffle because Bruno refuses to let Ferdinand join his “gang.” Ferdinand knocks out two of Bruno’s teeth with a stick. That night, the parents of both children meet to discuss their misdemeanour, which is where the play begins. As the evening progresses, the meeting degenerates into the four getting into mutual blame games on inadequate parenting and setting a punitive context for the “offender” to apologise to his “victim.” The parents refuse to accept that either of their kids could have been provocateur and easily slip into irrational arguments. This descent into madness peels their genteel layer as they become quite bold about their stance on misogyny, racial prejudice, homophobia and twisting morality to suit their stature. A central dramatic moment of the play occurs when one of the mothers vomits on stage — all over the coffee table and books — as if highlighting the futility and hollowness of pretence. One noted critic commented on the Broadway hit, “when I left the theatre, I thought I’ll never laugh again!”
In the current production, Reza’s play charts the course of the superficially civilised get-together, which soon lapses into an evening of mutual dislike and name-calling. By the end of the encounter, their acid dialogue burns through the veneer of smug, bourgeois respectability, with alternately comic and uncomfortable consequences. In the inter-personal relationships, there are conjugal cohesions as well as fights leading even to fisticuffs. There is also male-male bonding — over vintage bottles of rum — and female-female bonding on, what else, but “male inadequacies.” A most captivating fare.
Excerpts from interview with the director:
How did you hit upon the playIJ
I was lucky to catch the original West End production in 2008 and watch it with Sohrab Ardeshir, who is part of this very production. Right after the show, both of us agreed that someone should definitely do this show back home. After many speed-bumps, false starts and banging of heads, it’s finally happening!
What did you find so relevantIJ
As I look at my society that has supposedly reached the pinnacle in its evolution of technology, advancement and civilisation, I can’t help but feel that a universal regression is under way. We’re becoming less considerate and more narrow-minded — in both our instincts and our thought processes. We’re getting “less evolved.” To me, that’s what this text is about.
Could you elaborateIJ
Everyone is either trying to be politically correct or — going out of their way — to disregard correctness. We’re either preaching or we’re being obscene. All the while, we drift further and further from any meaning whatsoever. Someone, somewhere, will take offence: to a joke, to a skirt, to a choice, too close to nothing. It’s taking less and less provocation to pick up a club and start swinging.
In Delhi, we’ve road rage coming out of one’s inordinate love for one’s car. Is there something like a kid rage, out of one’s intense attachment to one’s kid, as seen in this playIJ
In Mumbai, too, we’ve plenty of road rage. Each of us grows from a kid to adulthood but can’t get rid of the innate rage. The point is in the search and this text is a viciously hilarious, heightened and provocative examination of social “norms.”
You’ve made the play quite claustrophobic. In the room, there are incidents which seem like bubbles waiting to burst…
It has been deliberately done by the acting ploy of the characters. Incidents do come to a climax and are to be defused, one way or the other.
There is also a musicality about the play…
This is also intentionally done, by making the actions in sections as in a symphony, with a rising crescendo and then a diminuendo to bring down the tension.
Do you think we carry a streak of neurosis in each of usIJ
If not neurosis, it’s a streak of irrational behaviour that seem to have survived in us. As someone said, we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or the meanest but because we’ve always been the craziest, most murderous marauders in the jungle.