Nine Years Theatre finds menace and fun in flawed source material God Of Carnage

God Of Carnage

Nine Years Theatre 
Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre
March 20, 8pm

A play about how shaky the foundations of civilisations are is of course particularly to the point now.

But at just 90 minutes, French playwright Yasmina Reza’s 2008 play God Of Carnage, with its sharp, projectile vomit-and-rum-fuelled descent into madness, has always strained credulity.

Her tale of a pair of middle-class couples radically misbehaving in a misplaced attempt to solve their two sons’ fight has a fundamental ridiculousness to it, and might be more easily played as a comedy of manners, though Reza is in fact much more earnest and serious.

This Mandarin version by Nine Years Theatre directed by Nelson Chia manages to give it a good go by resolutely accepting its realism and maintaining a degree of restraint, playing the barbs just malicious enough.

Reza never quite manages the fluency and wit of more accomplished writers of inter-couple tension like Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard, but her provocations are as timely as ever in the able hands of this actor quartet.

How much of people’s supposed values and behaviour are sheer pretence? And knowing this, is it really better to just drop the act?

Two 11-year-old boys have had an altercation at the playground, and the upshot is two lost front teeth. Michael (Tay Kong Hui) and Veronica (Mia Chee), the parents of the supposed victim, invite counterparts Alan (Cavin Soh) and Annette (Oon Shu An) to parley.

It would have been quickly resolved – and, in fact, Alan and Annette get ready multiple times to leave – but Veronica, who is writing a book on the crisis in Darfur in Sudan, insists on getting her more aloof guests to not just accept what happened, but also foist a degree of remorse and dictate punishment.

Alan and Annette’s egos as lawyer and wealth manager render them incapable of taking this lying down, even if they are not particularly interested in standing up for their child – “He is a savage,” pronounces Alan.

With the tension ratcheted up by Alan’s incessantly ringing phone, and a hairdryer that is repeatedly called to use, the couples break ranks from each other, loyalties realign along gender lines and there are superficial declarations on the nature of humanity and the illusion of progress.

The latter is not always picked up on and allowed to just dissipate, which is another quirk of this play that requires lots of wordless acknowledgement of awkwardness and instinctive mutual agreement to move on, not always convincing here.

It is Chee’s Veronica who controls the temperature of this play, which she does expertly. She holds steady and only gradually, unmistakably, turns the dial, keeping it from histrionics and managing to toy several times with reversal in the short runtime.

There is real pain and self-hatred in her face, and a hint of suppressed manic lunacy when she finally allows herself to crack.

Tay as her husband Michael – a simpler man whose imprint in the house has been relegated to a bar of expensive rum – adroitly toggles between funny and vicious with some unmannered physical humour.

The script gives Oon and Soh simpler tasks. But Soh, despite some tripped lines, is a natural foil and Oon, swaddled in defensive clothes, gives that tulip-eviscerating scene one of the most committed and vicious enactments this reviewer has seen.

Wong Chee Wai’s set has some depth to it. It extends backwards to a garden path leading out the door and another passageway to the kitchen. Vertically, it also stretches far upwards to make literal this play as a microcosm of the world.

The African masks that Veronica is keen on studying and collecting, a way of reminding herself that she is different, populate the house walls but also beyond. Never lit, these hover in the darkness and hem things in with their theatrics, violent history and menace.

This is a very watchable fight night. Reza’s insistence on giving a missing hamster near reverential status, however, remains as puzzlingly bathetic as ever – still much too slight to hang the moral universe of the play on, and which goes some way to hint at its glibness.

Book It/God Of Carnage

Where: Wild Rice @ Funan, 107 North Bridge Road
When: Till March 29, 8pm (Tuesdays to Fridays), 3 and 8pm (Saturdays), 3pm (Sundays)
Admission: $55 to $78 (SG Culture Pass eligible)
Info: str.sg/Du3Q