GOD OF CARNAGE Reviews

The star-studded Broadway turn of Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage officially opens at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre tonight, March 22.

The Great White Way bow of the play, which earned 2009 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, features Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden. Props to director Matthew Warchus, translator Christopher Hampton, set and costume designer Mark Thompson, lighting designer Hugh Vanstone and sound designers Simon Baker and Chris Cronin (with music by Gary Yershon).

Happy opening, God of Carnage! May you receive the reviews you deserve.

LimelightMike's not doing his job, I might as well jump in. Please post the official reviews here!

Sluck!

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That was definitely positive.

Off to a good start!

Updated On: 3/22/09 at 04:29 PM

Thank god Limelight Mike didn't start this thread at 12:01am last night...

He couldn't. He was drunk.

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Ouch, that's sad...especially for opening night.

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There was a commercial for this on TV the other day....I live in Texas. Um, why? Haha.

It looks great, though! I wish I could see it!

AP is Positive

"Civility gets thoroughly trashed along with a few other things in "God of Carnage," Yasmina Reza's hilarious yet surprisingly thoughtful comedy... In "God of Carnage," Reza demonstrates a keen, satiric understanding of middle-class values and the pomposity that often comes along with them. Yet she is a moralist, too. When values fly out the window, what's left to take their place? Apparently a world where brute force or the law of the jungle triumphs. Fortunately, in this sparkling production, laughter brilliantly accompanies the wholesale destruction."

http://tinyurl.com/cotdyn

Updated On: 3/22/09 at 07:12 PM

Backstage is Very Positive:

"If there is such a thing as a first among equals, that would be Marcia Gay Harden as Veronica, Michael's art-historian spouse. At first bristling with liberal intentions and loaded to the gills with the milk of human kindness, she proves to be the most ferocious pugilist in this living-room smackdown. When she tightly asks her hubby for a drink and he denies her request, her silent slow burn seems to immolate the theatre. Her bottled-up anger erupts like lava from a volcano, and her final, exhausted phone call to her daughter is heartbreakingly funny and sad.

Like Reza's Art, also directed by Warchus and featuring the same design team, this play was a hit in London and continental Europe and will probably achieve a long run on Broadway. With its single set, small cast, and high quotient of laughs and Virginia Woolf-like dramatic action, look to see God of Carnage go through several cast replacements in New York and show up on the rosters of numerous regional theatres."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003953967

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I think it's funny that one review notes James Gandolfini's similarity to Tony Soprano and another notes that there is no trace of the character whatsoever.

Either way, thank God the to-be-expected positive reviews are coming in.

Word of Mouth is a Rave:

They basically all agree it's a play that everyone would enjoy.

Review Link

Updated On: 3/22/09 at 09:52 PM

Positive with reservations from Mr. B.

"...Still, on the page the play doesn’t amount to much. It needs the fine-honed idiosyncrasies and unconditional commitment to unsympathetic characters that the actors here provide. They’re a marvelously giving, balanced ensemble. And each has bits of inspired invention that you tuck away into your memory file of classic stage moments: Mr. Gandolfini, in his first Broadway performance since he found fame as Tony Soprano, ingenuously defending cruelty to a pet hamster or conscientiously holding a blow dryer to damaged art books; Ms. Harden solemnly wrestling for control of the rum bottle; Ms. Davis’s nausea-prone character toting a plastic basin like a worried toddler; and Mr. Daniels obliviously shoveling down clafouti while talking on the phone."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/theater/reviews/23carn.html

Updated On: 3/22/09 at 10:22 PM

Entertainment Weekly gives the show an A-:

"Matthew Warchus, who's directed each of Reza's previous shows on Broadway, maintains a finely balanced farce-like pacing, giving particular attention to the silences in which his so-called adults stew and contemplate their next immature assaults on one other. And Christopher Hampton, Reza's longtime English-language translator, has created a witty adaptation that smartly suits its new U.S. venue (transposing the play's original Paris setting, which had been employed in London, to Brooklyn's Cobble Hill.)

From her international hit Art to Life x 3, Reza has established herself as a master of middlebrow social satires, magnificently constructed plays that reveal the character and contradictions of various types, that insert just enough highbrow references (clafouti, Darfur) to suggest a greater depth, and that gallop to a final curtain in an efficient hour and a half, without intermission. God of Carnage is true to form. In addition, it's enormously fun to watch ? and this well-synchronized cast of Broadway veterans has a grand old time devolving into petulant children on stage."

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20267200,00.html

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