Phil Powers, Suzi Regan, Joseph
Albright and Sarab Karroo in JET's
production of God of Carnage.
Parents
Behaving
Badly
Suzanne Chessler
Contributing Writer
y
asmina Reza's Tony-winning Best
Play about two sets of parents
meeting to resolve their 11-year-
old sons' playground altercation is called
God of Carnage. A film version, written and
directed by Roman Polanski and adapted
from Reza's play, is called Carnage.
Differences beyond the titles soon can
be determined as both versions of the
black comedy will be available locally.
The play will be staged Dec. 14-Jan. 1 by
Jewish Ensemble Theatre at the Berman
Center for the Performing Arts on the
Jewish Community Center campus in West
Bloomfield, where the New Year's Eve per-
formance will be followed by a party. The
film will be released in December in select
theaters nationwide, followed by wider
distribution soon after the first of the year
(no firm local date has been set).
"What attracted me to this play is the
way it approaches ideas about who people
think they are versus who they actually
are says David Magidson, JET artistic
director and director of this staging.
"It explores all that in a way that has many
funny episodes, and it becomes interesting
and important as well as entertaining."
Although the play, first seen by Magidson
in New York, offers no explicitly Jewish con-
tent, he believes it projects currents of think-
ing that could be interpreted as Jewish.
According to Agnes Poirier in the U.K.'s
The Independent, Reza, a French play-
wright and author based in Paris, explains
the humor as reflecting her Jewish culture
(her Hungarian-Jewish mother and her
father, a Moscow-born Iranian Jew, were
French immigrants) because it makes
people laugh at themselves.
Reza has won multiple awards for her
works. Her play Art brought Olivier, Tony
and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards
for Best Play. The National Theatre pro-
duction of Life (x) 3 received an Olivier
Award nomination for Best Play. Her
works for theater have been translated into
35 languages and productions worldwide.
Her last book, Dawn, Dusk or Night: A Year
with Nicolas Sarkozy (Knopf; 2008), a keenly
observed portrait of the French president,
also has been translated worldwide.
Appearing in the West Bloomfield pro-
duction are Sarab Kamoo as Veronica, Suzi
Regan as Annette, Joey Albright as Michael
and Phil Powers as Alan.
In the film, set in a New York apartment
but filmed in France due to Polanski's
legal inability to travel to the U.S., the stars
are Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph
Waltz and John C. Reilly, with some char-
acter name changes.
In the play, "the characters show their
surface behavior and then what hap-
pens as underlying and primitive traits
take over:' Magidson says. "In the play
or movie, each performer will make the
character his or her own and show differ-
ent streams of thinking as well as some
universals in what can devolve among
individuals under stress."
Monologue Man
JET presents
Tony-winning
God of Carnage.
JET presents God of Carnage, a
Michigan premiere in a joint co-pro-
duction with Performance Network
Theatre in Ann Arbor, Dec.14-Jan.
1 at the Berman Center for the
Performing Arts in West Bloomfield.
Show times: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-
Thursday, Dec.14-15; 5 and 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, Dec.17; 2 and 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, Dec.18; 7:30 p.m. Monday-
Tuesday, Dec.19-20; 2 and 7:30
p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 21; 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, Dec. 22; 2 and 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Dec. 28; 7 and 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, Dec. 31; 2 and 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, Jan.1. There will be a dairy
tray, champagne and dancing to a
DJ with the 9:30 p.m. New Year's
Eve performance ($80 for play and
party). Play tickets: $36-$43. (248)
788-2900; jettheatre.org.
Performance Network Theatre's
co-production of God of Carnage runs
Jan.12-Feb.19 in Ann Arbor. (734)
663-0681; performancenetwork.org .
1111.1111111111,111..".—
Josh Kornbluth shares a comic personal tale.
Suzanne Chessler
Contributing Writer
osh Kornbluth is a rebel.
His parents raised him to be
a communist without religion,
but he has come to describe himself as a
progressive liberal who had his adult bar
mitzvah in Israel.
It sounds like pretty serious stuff until
people hear his monologue, Red Diaper
Baby, scheduled Dec. 3-4 by the Jewish
Ensemble Theatre in West Bloomfield. He
wants to relate a personal tale filled with
comic memories.
"This piece is undiluted me says
Kornbluth, 52, raised in New York and
settled in California. "I've done eight full-
length monologues, but this is my funda-
mental piece. It's the show about where I
come from and what I was meant to be:'
Writing and performing theater pieces
was not the vision Kornbluth had for his
career. He enrolled in Princeton planning
to be a mathematician.
j
"I couldn't do calculus, so I became a
political theory major:' he recalls during
a phone interview from his home. "I was
offered a job as a copy editor in Chicago
and then became a copy editor and occa-
sional writer in Boston. I tried a bunch of
things and eventually settled on perform-
ing monologues."
His father's death prompted him to find
an upbeat way of keeping his dad's mem-
ory pulsating, and he came up with this
theater piece. Kornbluth, then in his 20s,
developed it as he relocated to California.
"It gets hard for me to disentangle fact
from fiction',' he explains. "It's mostly fact,
but there are aspects that have been dra-
matized, embellished or compressed."
In capturing the outlook of his parents,
Kornbluth delves into their experiences
during the Depression and the feelings
of hopelessness that turned them toward
communism.
Among his other monologues, Andy
Warhol: Good for the Jews? offers his com-
ments on a series of paintings depicting
20th-century Jewish icons.
Kornbluth's interest in Judaism built on
a friendship with a rabbi. The entertainer,
married to a teacher, has not insisted that
his son share his religious interests.
In between working on theater pieces,
Kornbluth has given his attention to
films. He has created Haiku Tunnel and
appeared in Searching for Bobby Fischer,
Jack and Teknolust.
"I'm starting a new monologue about my
experiences with Judaism, my visit to Israel
and attempts at playing the oboe;' he says.
"I tend to go in for strange combina-
tions, and I'm aiming to open it in the
summer of 2013."
Although Kornbluth never lived in
Michigan, he does know some small-town
culture in the area because his stepmother
came from Ottawa Lake near Monroe. The
final scenes in his original monologue take
place in the state known through her.
"One advantage of failing in a lot of things
is that failure tends to lead to comedY,' says
Kornbluth, lamenting his lack of prowess
with the oboe among other trials and errors.
"It seems I'm always getting material:"
Josh Kornbluth in Red Diaper Baby,
presented by the JET.
Red Diaper Baby will be performed
8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 3, and 5 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 4, at the Berman
Center for the Performing Arts
on the campus of the Jewish
Community Center in West
Bloomfield. $36-$43. (248) 788-
2900; jettheatre.org .
December 1 ' 2011
67