THE ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE MALTE-MEDITERRANÉE WILL PRESENT YASMINE REZA’S ‘LE DIEU DU CARNAGE’, A PLAY TRANSLATED INTO MALTESE BY PROF. ANTHONY AQUILINA AND DIRECTED BY LINO FARRUGIA AT ST JAMES CAVALIER NEXT MONTH.

God of Carnage is funny because spectators get to know what each character is really thinking under a sincere, or false-sincere, passive cover. This is how critics of the original French play greeted Le Dieu du Carnage when it was shown in its stage and cinematic version in English. Eventually, once a bottle of scotch gets consumed, the characters admit to their feelings, and surprisingly, the play still remains funny. That is where the brilliance of the writing comes in.

Yasmina Reza, the author and playwright, is, first and foremost, an actor. Her plays have been described as acting showcases, displaying a real understanding of the relationship between actor and script. This is how Don Leavitt defines the French playwright who has received worldwide recognition. With an ear for what works on stage, her dialogue is often sharp.  She knows what actors can do with their roles. As a result, Reza’s plays resonate with actors including some of the biggest names on Broadway and in Hollywood.  Audience interest in her works has helped to make Yasmina Reza one of the most important figures in late-twentieth century theatre.

MALTESE TRANSLATION

Alla tal-Qirda was translated into Maltese by Professor Anthony Aquilina from the French original and Alliance française de Malte-Mediterranée is proud to be associated with this French author of world fame. The performances will take place on the first two weekends of November at St James Theatre in Valletta.  

Besides the prestige and the honour of joining so many other countries in enjoying this play in their native language, the producers feel that Yasmina Reza will bring to Maltese audiences the latest overtures of modern theatre in its full bloom. Reza’s plays have been translated into 35 languages and performed in theatres around the world including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Theatre of Almeida, the Schiller Theatre and the  Schaubühne in Berlin, the Burgteater of Vienna, the Royal Theatre of Stockholm as well as many well-known venues from Moscow to Broadway.

In the able hands of director Lino Farrugia, whose brilliant career includes the staging of authors such as Eduardo de Filippo, Ibsen, Shakespeare, Ayckbourn, Lorca, Ebejer, and others, the Maltese cast will feature four formidable actors whose recent performances have lifted them into a deserved acclaim of successful characters with social themes. These are Jes Camilleri, Charlotte Grech, Kris Spiteri and Shirley Blake.

TOP PLAYWRIGHT

Yasmina Reza was born in1959 in Paris, the daughter of a Hungarian violinist mother and a successful businessman of Russian-Iranian descent. Reza’s artistic talents led her to literature and drama. She studied theatre at University Paris X in Nanterre, and later pursued intensive actor’s training at Paris’s internationally renowned Jacques Lecoq Drama School. As a working actress in France, Reza won roles in contemporary and classic productions and in between performances she began to write her own plays. She completed her first play, Conversations after a Burial in 1987 and was awarded the Molière Award for Best Author. Reza has also written screenplays for films and a number of novels which have been also published in the USA, Japan, and South America as well as in Europe. In 2010 she directed her first film Chicas starring Emmanuelle Seigner.

Reza’s international acclaim, however came with her third play. Since its Paris debut in 1995,  Art has earned an estimated $300 million worldwide and won numerous awards, including the Molière Award for Best Author, Best Play and Best Production; the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1997; and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1998. 

Reza could do no wrong. She was awarded the Molière Award for Best Fringe Production, for her fourth play, The Unexpected Man, premiered in 1995. Reza also penned the critically acclaimed Life X 3 (2000) and A Spanish Play (2004), both of which have been produced in theatres throughout Europe, North America, and Australia. Her latest work Comment vous racontez la partie was published last year and will be performed on stage at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin this month (October 2012).

Stars from Sean Connery to Robert de Niro are attracted to Reza’s works because these are character-driven and focused on relationships, or the lack thereof, and the tensions that arise in the normal course of even the most mundane of human interactions. Fabienne Pascaud of Telerama once wrote that famous actors dream of parts in Reza’s plays because of her masterful use of silence, In a play, words are parentheses to the silences, believes Reza.

CARNAGE

In 2006 God of Carnage became the next instant hit when it premiered on stage in Zürich, and in Paris two years later starring Isabelle Huppert. A translation into English by Christopher Hampton was put up at the Gielgud Theatre in London, also in 2008. Last year, Roman Polanski directed its cinematic version, Carnage, starring Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet. As with earlier plays Carnage follows the formula of taking a group of upper-middle-class characters stripping them, with algebraic precision, to their lonely, frightened ids. In this instance farce trumps formula, and the play is the richer for it

Before the one-act play begins, two eleven-year-old children, Ferdinand and Bruno, get involved in an argument and Ferdinand knocks out two of Bruno's teeth with a stick. That night, the parents of both children meet to discuss the matter. Ferdinand's father, Alain is a lawyer who is always on his mobile phone while his wife, Annette, is her husband’s wealthy showcase. Bruno's father, Michel, is a self-made wholesaler with a sick mother. Michel's wife, Véronique, is writing a book.

As the evening progresses, the rendez-vous degenerates into the four getting into irrational arguments, and their discussion falls into the loaded topics of mistrust of women, racial prejudice and homophobia.  The play reaches dramatic moments when Annette suddenly loses her composure and commits what everybody else tries hard to avoid in public. Audiences laugh but Reza maintains that her plays are not exactly comedies. They are funny tragedies, she retorts.

Alla tal-Qirda, adapted for a Maltese audience without losing any of its originality by its stage director Lino Farrugia, delivers the cathartic release of watching other people’s marriages go boom; a study in the tension between civilized surface and savage instinct. The play, a satisfyingly primitive entertainment with an intellectual veneer, won the Olivier Award in London for best new comedy. It is subtle in its shifting ballet of emotions and loyalties among the irritable quartet. As alcohol replaces coffee and outer garments are removed, sides of combat blur. The men gang up on the women, the women gang up on the men, and the husbands and wives wind up, briefly, changing partners.

COMMENTS FROM SOME OF THE CAST

Jes Camilleri

My character, Alan, is a successful (and very busy) international lawyer with few (if any) scruples and his ear constantly glued to his mobile phone. He possesses an over-inflated idea of his own manhood and believes in the ‘God of Carnage’ that gives the play its name. We soon realise, however over the course of the play that he too is reliant on various crutches to prop up his male ego and once these are taken away, his behaviour is not too different from the playground fight that the couples are trying to resolve.

Charlotte Grech

I was attracted to this play because of its excellent script. It is basically an argument between two couples where very early on, despite attempts of putting on a 'show', you notice rifts between them. Very soon after, you question the many times you have gone through similar arguments. My character is that of a woman who is bitter and at the end of her tether. She is a career woman, can very well hold her own, but also very much alone juggling family and work life. She probably drinks at home to shed off an unfulfilled life. The play is relevant because it deals with myriad human emotions, and transmits everyday situations through humour.  It will resonate with its audience long after they have left the theatre in a bubble of emotions.

Shirley Blake

My character, Veronica, is an idealist humanitarian who's ever ready to lecture about cooking, Darfur, Kokoschka or playground morality, but who also stomps and punches when she gets upset. This play is about the epitome of selfishness. Each of the characters is self-centered but rationalises it by trying to create the illusion that they care about others. The performances are crucial because the point is to allow each viewer to identify with one character while the actions of the others remain justifiable. Indeed, no one is right or wrong, but each one is blinded by a subjectivity that underlines any attempt of a rational judgment. And the funniest thing is that they all try to be objective when it's totally impossible.

Alla tal-Qirda (God of Carnage), a one-act play by Yasmina Reza in Maltese, is being staged at St James Cavalier on November 2,3,4 and 9, 10, 11 at 8pm (3 November performance starts at 7.30 pm). Tickets, at €15 each, are available as usual from St James Cavalier (www.sjcav.org).