A bourgeois living room, two sets of parents: they come together to settle a violent dispute between their respective children. Amid cutting remarks and sudden bursts of tension, the polite, civilised, “adult” façade begins to crumble, exposing the “god of carnage” that may lie dormant within each of us.
Le Dieu du carnage, Yasmina Reza’s comedy of corrosive humour and effortless cynicism, continues to be staged on theatres around the world. Winner of both a Laurence Olivier Award and a Tony Award for Best Play, it holds up a distorting mirror to the audience, in which they may discover – not without a sense of bitter discomfort – something uncomfortably close to themselves.
In Antonio Zavatteri’s production, the play becomes an unforgiving lens on human behaviour: evolution has not erased the instinct for supremacy, nor the desire to overpower and annihilate the other.
