This holiday season, isn't it time for a little " At.RN44.a:""
JET presents the Midwest Premiere of the Tony Award winning comedy...
JET's "God of Carnage"
a comedy of bad behavior
By Martin F. Kohn
lighting, props and scenery
weren't finished. They'll add to
a production that already com-
pares favorably to what I saw, or
you wouldn't be reading this. I
would have been paid either
way.)
There are at least three levels
of comedy in "God of
Carnage"— physical, verbal and
unspoken. Each entails its
I unique challenges. Hurling
insults requires different skills
than hurling objects. And then
there's someone who just plain
hurls.
Photo by Jan Cartwright
Food. Clothing. Shelter.
Feeling that you're better than
somebody else.
That last one appears to be
humankind's fourth basic need
in Yasmina Reza's play "God of
Carnage" and it unleashes all
sorts of comic havoc between
and within two self-absorbed
couples meeting for the first
time. It seems that Couple A's
11-year-old son has smacked
SUN.
THURS. SAT,
SAT'
Couple B's son with a stick, and
DATE DEC. 14 DEC. 15 DEC. 17 DEC, 18 DEC. 19 DEC. 20 DEC, 21 DEC, 22 DE, 28 DEC. 29 DEC. 31 JAN. 1
the parents are sitting down to
2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m. 2 p.m. & 7:30 P.M. 2 p.m, 7:30 p.m. 7 p.m. & 2 p.m. &
TIME 7:30 pm. 7:30 p.m.
hash things out.
8:30 p.m. 6:30 p.m.
910 p.m. 850 p.m.
7:30 p.m. mr? Series
Two schoolchildren get into a fight.
Now their parents are set to have a cordial discussion.
Yet there is little cordiality about it...
ION Wautiot. You
d der TO WIN
OW WAR%
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2 Shows! 7 p.m. & 9:30 p.m.
Celebration Package: 9:30 p.m. show followed by food,
dancing and a midnight champagne toast
- • -
• •
--
Hash is what these four aging
yuppies make of the evening.
Whatever the kids may have
done to each other is beside the
point. What the adults do to each
other makes for a compellingly
entertaining 90 or so minutes at
the Jewish Ensemble Theatre
Company.
To put it in terms the kids
might relate to: No matter how
grown up and refined, inside
every Gallant there is a Goofus
waiting to burst forth. And who
wouldn't want to watch that?
- • •
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This production will be presented in The Berman Center for the Performing Arts in the JCC
Now, a word about this
review. Because I'd seen the
2009 Broadway production, and
to get early word out on this
one, JET hired me to write about
a late-stage rehearsal. Sound,
Making it all work are director
David J. Magidson and four
eminent Michigan actors — Phil
Powers and Suzi Regan as one
couple, Joseph Albright and
Sarah Kamoo as the other.
Powers plays a lawyer who is
forever attending to business on
his cell phone, avoiding the
demands of family life. Regan
plays his wife, a tightly-wound
wealth manager with a wealth of
issues to manage.
Albright plays a businessman
whose salesman-like air of
jovial good fellowship couldn't
possibly last. Kamoo plays a
smug writer/social activist
whose sense of superiority is an
irresistible target.
As the play opens, each actor
conveys the frustration, fear
and/or resentment seething
beneath his or her character's
calm demeanor. By the end of
the play, everything has come
out, much to the playgoer's
delight.
My second-grade teacher used
to say that the reason we laugh
at performers is because we're
so happy we're not them. That
never made sense to me until
now. If only it were true. We
may be more like these charac-
ters than we care to admit,
which, when the laughter dies
down, is what "God of Carnage"
sends us home with.
December 15 a 2011
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