CIVILITY CRUMBLES, BUT
THE COMEDY NEVER BUILDS

South Coast Rep’s revival exposes how thin
satire needs sharper direction to truly sting

Melinda Page Hamilton and Kim Martin-Cotten

The first time I saw Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage was at The Ahmanson Theatre with an all-star cast, one so good that they practically hid that the 75-minute one-act is not a great play. But great play or fluff, in the theater, it’s the experience you have, right? And with James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden, and Hope Davis reprising their roles from the 2009 Broadway production, and stunning direction by Matthew Warchus (who could squeeze comedy out of a turnip), I understood why God of Carnage won the Tony for Best Play. This was inspired star-powered ensemble work. The play isn’t all that good? I didn’t care. Even with the cavernous Ahmanson stage, I had a good time. Only a sourpuss would have thought otherwise.

Dan Donohue, Melinda Page Hamilton, Kim Martin-Cotten and Brian Vaughn

If you have seen her extremely likeable Art (which just has a revival on Broadway), you may understand that Reza writes set-ups, not plays, and her plays even seem like rip-offs of much better — much deeper — plays. And if you witness at South Coast Rep her oft-produced opus (made palatable by Christopher Hampton’s translation from the French), especially AFTER seeing Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (playing in rep at SCR on the same stage and using two of the same actors), savvy theatergoers will know what I mean. Her work makes me think of Chinese dinners, which can be delicious, but you’re hungry an hour later.

Dan Donohue and Melinda Page Hamilton

In a giant Brooklyn living room with books and earth tones are all over the place, Michael and Veronica Novick (Dan Donohue and Melinda Page Hamilton) are welcoming to their home Alan and Annette Raleigh (Brian Vaughan and Kim Martin-Cotten), parents of the 11-year-old lad who busted two of the Novick’s 11-year-old son’s teeth in a playground skirmish. Soon, these grown-up outer-boroughers are reduced to childish, self-centered animals. It starts with a sly comment here and a nasty retort there, but the next thing you know someone’s puking on an out-of-print Oscar Kokoschka catalogue and suddenly, there are no rules, leaving no cell phone, tulip arrangement or hamster safe from Reza’s plot-manipulating path of destruction. It’s too much, too quickly and even at 75 minutes it goes on for far too long. I couldn’t wait to get out of the theater.

Brian Vaughn, Kim Martin-Cotten, Melinda Page Hamilton and Dan Donohue

The situation once again drew me in with an interesting premise but inevitably left me too bored to be disappointed. Kim Martin-Cotten, so devastating and funny as Martha in Woolf?, is simply miscast here. Brian Vaughn, her George, fares better as Alan, a sharkish corporate lawyer who’s in constant thrall to his cell phone. Dan Donohue plays the over-eager host Michael, but his arc doesn’t gel. Melinda Page Hamilton is fine, bringing a lot of energy to his bad-tempered and argumentative partner. None of these characters seem particularly plausible though, and personally I was longing for them all to shut up way before the tulips hit the fan.

Brian Vaughn

Ultimately, the problem isn’t just Reza’s irredeemably shallow text, which is never as funny or clever as it imagines itself to be — it’s that this production does nothing to deepen, complicate, or sharpen it. Without the magnetic brilliance of Matthew Warchus’s original cast, the play requires direction that can build tension, calibrate escalation, churn up some comedy, and locate the genuine cruelty beneath the banter. Under Marco Barricelli’s watch, the descent from brittle civility to vicious farce feels abrupt rather than inevitable, mechanical rather than dangerous. The concept of civilized behavior as a thin veneer over roiling baseness may not be new, but it can still sting. Here, the comedy isn’t sculpted; it’s simply arranged just like those tulips. The result isn’t savage — it’s staged.

Brian Vaughn, Melinda Page Hamilton and Kim Martin-Cotten

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photos by Scott Smeltzer/SCR

God of Carnage
in rep with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Dr. in Costa Mesa
ends on March 21, 2026
for rotating dates and tickets ($36 to $128), call 714.708.5555 or visit SCR

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA

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