Review of God of Carnage at Watford Pump House

It is indeed a comedy of misdirected passions, but it also has elements of both farce and satire which are inconsistent with that description.

It presents two married couples whose sons have quarrelled at school, causing actual injury to one of them; so we see the parents having what they call a committee meeting in one of their homes to decide what attitude they should take.

There are only these four characters, making this play particularly suitable for the small stage.

Without giving away too much of how the meeting progresses, perhaps it can be said that they relapse into the childhood that they are trying to understand, and by the end of the play they are more confused than at the beginning.
 

As to satire, the families live in Highbury and display attitudes associated with that area of North London – but contrasting attitudes. This causes the meeting to degenerate into actual violence and a good deal of foul language, represented farcically. 
 

Alan, cleverly played by Matthew Gregory, ostensibly has a responsible professional position, but his appearance and the way he deals with numerous telephone calls suggest that he has delusions of grandeur. Mark Dawson, as the other father, Michael, manages to convey that, without the same standing, he may be nearer to sanity – though not always! Felicity Cox and Charlotte Gregory as the two wives quarrel both with each other and with their husbands.
 

We can sympathise with their dilemmas, but the director, Alan Cox, has not persuaded his cast to be either comical enough or thoughtful enough to win our understanding as such a play must do, though with this reservation they all give polished performances.
 

The play was written in French by Yasmina Reza and translated by Christopher Hampton into a realistic English idiom. But perhaps, in spite of many English language successes elsewhere, it is because of the difference in national cultures that this production did not entirely convince.