“God of Carnage” is a bit like the seminal MTV reality show “The Real World.” To paraphrase a bit: What happens when two couples, put into a room together, stop being polite and stop getting real?
The scene is a Cobble Hill, Brooklyn apartment in the late 2000s. While playing in the park, it seems, one young boy hit another with a stick, and the play is centered on the parents’ discussion of the consequences.
The couples start out on good terms, as polite as well-off Brooklynites are expected to be, but the conversation quickly turns ugly, as they dispense with the niceties, start getting personal, and then stray almost entirely from the subject at hand, save to use it as a metaphor for the human condition.
Believe it or not, all this is actually hilarious. In fact, “Carnage” is one of the funniest plays I’ve seen at the Peterborough Players in recent memory.
Before the show, Director Gus Kaikkonen said he’d been waiting to put on this Yasmina Reza-penned play until he had just the right cast. His waiting was not in vain.
Tom Frey probably gets the most laughs as matter-of-fact, workaholic lawyer Alan Raleigh, his ever-present cellphone shackling him to his office. His spouse, Annette (Susan Riley Stevens) gets in plenty of her own, with some physical comedy audiences aren’t like to forget anytime soon.
The seemingly liberal foils to that more conservative couple are Michael and Veronica Novak, played by David Breitbarth and Kate Hampton. Michael’s the sort of everyman you’d like to have a whiskey with, and he’s got his own burden, his ailing mother, attached to his back via cordless phone. Veronica plays peacekeeper for as long as she can, but as the polite society within her apartment walls breaks down, even she can’t keep her cool forever.
“God of Carnage” runs through Sept. 11 at the Peterborough Players. For tickets and more information, visit peterboroughplayers.org or call the box office at 924-7585.