Under the Masks

God of Carnage – AstonRep Theatre

Michael and Veronica, a pair of parents, are hosting another pair of parents, Alan and Annette, in their home to discuss a fight their two 11-year-old sons had resulting in one boy hitting the other with a stick and knocking out two teeth. It begins as four enlightened, urbane parents all coming together to showcase how mature they can be. It turns quickly into a four-way brawl that would put their children to shame.

God of Carnage is a 2008 play by French playwright Yasmina Reza and premiered in New York in 2009 with a translation by Christopher Hampton. Having people over for drinks that devolve into tears and recrimination is a theater tradition with a long history. (See: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the heightened sense of intimacy. Maybe people are just jerks. But from the moment the parents open their mouths, it’s clear each is trying to outdo the other in being enlightened and understanding, and that it has almost nothing to do with their children as much as their own egos.

The quartet of actors all handle their roles well. Erin O’Brien’s Veronica perfectly evoked the well-off housewife who espouses the correct views on everything, but when challenged finds the performance of empathy was as much for her own benefit as anyone else’s. Mike Newquist as her husband Michael does a good job portraying the occasionally petulant manchild who doesn’t actually want to be bothered with all of this. Mark Tecderas’ Alan is a high powered attorney whose pharmaceutical client keeps interrupting on his cell phone. Alan is, to be blunt, a jerk, but by the end of the night, he’s also the most honest about who he is, and you can respect that, even if you still don’t like him. Maggie Antonijevic rounds out the quartet as Annie, Alan’s beleaguered wife who can’t get or keep his attention on any issue, domestic or otherwise. The fault lines in their respective relationships provide fertile ground for the couples to fight with their partner as often as the other couple, and new teams will form and explode apart more than once over the course of the evening.

If I had to articulate one issue, it’s that, at times, the action was not as taut as I think it could have been. These kinds of dramas rely on the ping pong ball of your attention ricocheting quickly from one meltdown to the next. Like I said, each of the actors themselves was very good in their parts; there were just a couple of spots where action/reaction didn’t snap as quickly as I think it could have.

I usually loathe attempts to update a (non-Shakespeare) play, since I think it has the opposite of the intended effect, but one piece of staging really worked for me here. When the couples enter, they are briefly wearing masks, and when the characters make a show of getting ready to leave, it’s the first thing they reach for. The implication that the fight and this summit are taking place here in the long tail of the pandemic ratcheted everything up a little for me. It underscored that we’re all out of practice with face-to-face interactions, particularly with strangers who have not been carefully vetted. Even if the world were perfect, these four would likely find a way to devolve in fighting, but still, it gave the setting a bit of a ragged edge that made everything feel more plausible, even inevitable.

For fans of the theater, the return to live theater is definitely one of the milestones we’ve used to mark, if not the end of the pandemic, progress toward it certainly. I met a friend for dinner before the show, and then got a drink with her afterwards. On the walk to the bar, the first snow of the season was gently falling. You could not have scripted a more quintessential ‘autumn evening in Chicago’ if you tried. We both noted how astonishingly normal an evening it was, if you squint past the masks and the vaccination cards. This is a roundabout way of saying the show was a lovely part of a lovely evening, and I encourage you to make this show part of an evening out on the town as well.

Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented November 12 – December 12 at The Edge Off-Broadway Theater, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave. Chicago. Proof of vaccination is required at the door, and masks must be worn during the performance.

Tickets are available at www.astonrep.com or by calling (773) 828-9129.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.