It goes without saying that parents are always older than their children. But are they always more mature?
In “God of Carnage,” which opens May 15 at Steel Beam Theatre in St. Charles, parents meeting to discuss their children’s bad behavior end up displaying some of their own.
“God of Carnage is a Tony-award-winning comedic drama that has a relatively simple premise: two 11 year-old boys have a playground altercation that results in one of them losing two teeth,” Director Marge Uhlarik-Boller said in an interview via email. “Their parents have assembled to hash over the issue and out of that a series of events explode onto the stage with hilarious results.”
Running through June 7, show times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and 3 p.m. Sundays.
While a mix of both drama and comedy, Uhlarik-Boller said “the farcical elements are pretty high at times.
“The show is basically about educated, professional people behaving badly and that definitely is amusing,” she said. “It’s a very funny play and the actors are all wonderful in their roles. I think it’s a great production and I encourage folks to come out and see it. It’s a great evening of theatre and a short one at that!”
The script is written by playwright Yasmina Reza, who “won a Tony for her show ‘Art,’ which was a darling of the critics and audiences alike in the ’90s,” said Uhlarik-Boller, who resident director at Steel Beam. The original version was written in French and premiered in 2006. It was later translated to English, premiering in London’s West End in 2008 and on Broadway in 2009. Only minor changes in the script were made with the translation, Uhlarik-Boller said.
“Reza does write in French and her frequent collaborator is Christopher Hampton, a British playwright,” she said. “There are no plot changes although in order for it to be set in New York, of course, locations and names were altered.”
Featuring a cast of four — two men and two women — the show runs 90 minutes without an intermission.
“The challenge is finding the transitions and delineating them throughout without making the switches seem artificial. The actors have to pace themselves — because things get pretty physical and frantic — in order to keep their energies fresh,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “There is another challenge which involves a physical event that’s usually not seen onstage; without giving it away, it has been fun to figure that out. Alliances between the characters keep shifting and that creates interesting mixes for the movement and staging.”
One of the fun elements of the show, she said, watching the characters go from “very highbrow and civilized to turning into their baser selves.
“They start out drinking coffee and by the end they are the worse for wear due to an influx of rum into the situation. So sometimes scenes that have been playing relatively sanely become less so as we explore that effect on the characters,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “One of our scenes got so silly that as we explored the situation that an actor fell off his chair onto the stage floor, which of course made us all laugh. And, of course, we’ve kept that in because it happened naturally.”
“God of Carnage” is the final play in Steel Beam’s 2014-2015 season. When the shows for the season were originally announced, the rights for the play were listed as pending for several months.
“Oh there are a myriad of reasons why the rights could have been pending and we are rarely privy to why that might have been,” Uhlarik-Boller said when asked why. “Perhaps some other professional group with a different status had considered doing it; I once had a play pulled because Julia Roberts was making her stage debut in it in NYC and we were planning to do it in Glen Ellyn. I think we found out in November that it was fine.”
In 2011 a film adaptation of the play was released. Directed by Roman Polanski, the title was shortened to “Carnage” and starred Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet. Uhlarik-Boller said she has seen the film, but found it “basically unsuccessful.
“Maybe because most of the actors in the film are known as dramatic actors, I found the film heavy-handed and not as funny as the play. And let’s face it — Roman Polanski is not exactly known as the director of farce,” she said.
Although the action in the film is the same as the play and not opened up to include changes such as additional settings, she said the play is “so much better than the movie.”
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer.
More Top Picks Best Panini Presses
“God of Carnage”
When: May 15-June 7
Where: Steel Beam Theatre, 111 W. Main St., St. Charles
Tickets: $22-$28
Information: 630-587-8521 or steelbeamtheatre.com