God Of Carnage Tickets: Stars Assembled In Paris To Shoot God Of Carnage

God of Carnage (originally Le Dieu du Carnage) is a play by Yasmina Reza, first directed by Jurgen Gosch and performed in Zurich on 8 December 2006. It was first produced in English in London on 25 March 2008, in a translation by Christopher Hampton. The play is about two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, who meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving into chaos. In 2009, God of Carnage was given the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. God of Carnage won Best Play as well as Best Direction and Best Actress In A Play (for Marcia Gay Harden) at the 2009 Tony Awards.

Before the play begins, two 11-year-old children, Ferdinand Reille and Bruno Vallon (Benjamin and Henry in the Broadway production), get involved in argument because Bruno refuses to let Ferdinand join his 'gang'. 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 (Alan in the Broadway production), is a lawyer who is never off his mobile phone. Ferdinand's mother, Annette is in "wealth management" (her husband's wealth, to be precise), and consistently wears good shoes. Bruno's father, Michel (Michael in the Broadway production), is a self-made wholesaler with an unwell mother. Bruno's mother, Veronique (Veronica in the Broadway production), is writing a book about Darfur.

God of Carnage opened in the West End at the Gielgud Theatre on 25 March 2008. The original cast featured Ralph Fiennes as Alain, Tamsin Greig as Annette, Janet McTeer as Veronique and Ken Stott as Michel. On the opening night of the performance, there was a power failure about an hour into the show. The show therefore had to continue in emergency lighting.

Despite this, the play was reviewed positively by most critics. Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph wrote that, "with no lesser stars than Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Ken Stott and Janet McTeer playing the warring quartet, parents and non-parents alike will surely be elbowing each other out of the way to get a ringside view from the stalls." Micheal Billington in The Guardian gave the play four out of five stars saying that, "All four actors are excellent and, in Matthew Warchus's deft production, show the thin veneer of bourgeois pretence."

When the play was being discussed on Newsnight Review, Mark Kermode said that he laughed all the way through the play and Anne McElvoy described it as, "A fantastic Abigail's Party for the urban, professional classes." John Harris described God of Carnage as, "A play of two halves", in that the cast is British and it projects Britishness, but then it changes and claims that the cast behaves in ways that British people do not normally behave (the French half).