Review: Carnage

Carnage

Civilization cracks when parents atone for their children’s sins.

I was already excited last autumn when I saw Carnage’s Helsinki
In the repertoire of the City Theatre’s Lilla Teatern, but I still found the Swedish-language play too challenging for me.

The play is based on the play God Of Carnage , written by Yasmina Reza , from which Roman Polanski has also directed the drama-comedyCarnage. After seeing the film, I remember thinking that I could really get even more out of the text in the theatre.
The text itself is absolutely brilliant, perceptive, insightful, sharply funny and surprising. I was delighted to see that the Helsinki City Theatre has also brought a Finnish-language version of Carnage to the stage.

The events of the play take place in an apartment where two somewhat different couples meet. The starting point is a situation where the Renlunds’ son has hit the Holmströms’ son with a stick. This is what the boys’ parents set out to find out among themselves. They are played in a nuanced, skilful and boisterous way by Minna Haapkylä, Jonna Järnefelt, Carl-Christian Rundman and Tobias Zilliacus.

From a seemingly simple starting point, the tension slowly begins to both dissipate and grow around the most imaginative power structures and verbal confrontations. The most interesting thing about the play is the endless twists and turns of human communication, the unrestraint and tragicomic, the clashes and misunderstandings. The simple staging works and also creates a successful contrast to the rich and sprawling dialogue.

The audience empathizes strongly. It’s fascinating to see which scene makes everyone laugh. Sometimes I find myself wiping away tears of laughter. Carnage is a great example of how an entertaining and comedic play can also be a skilful study of the boundaries and intersections of communication between people.
The play’s charmingly and tragically complex human soul life is dealt with in many different ways and on many different levels. It is probably the layering and depth of the play that makes it so funny. Personally, at least, I often noticed that I had already laughed at myself when I identified with a certain line or moment. Refreshing, and in a suitably confusing and necessary way, also shaking.

I would also like to praise the duration of the play, it is just the right amount of concise and upright in its length of one hour and twenty minutes. There are no particularly stagnant phases in the play, nor does it need them, so skilfully is it paced in terms of structure and execution as the intensity increases towards the end.

I can only imagine how challenging and rewarding it is to bring a text by a writer like Reza to the stage. Tiina Lymi’s direction is brilliant and also reflects her experience in theatre and especially comedy. From the end result, you can sense and see that behind the play is a group of passionate and ironclad professionals. I would like to watch this kind of frenzy and throwing myself into it more often.