Le Dieu du Carnage HK Repertory Theatre HK City Hall Theatre Reviewed: Sep 11
All is not what it seems in French playwright Yasmina Reza's Le Dieu du Carnage (God of Carnage). Two pairs of middle-class parents meet up after their 11-year-old sons have a fight in the playground, resulting one of them losing two front teeth.
The meeting begins with both couples acting politely and agreeing on what has happened. But when the question of responsibility arises, the discussion slowly disintegrates into an ugly quarrel that strays far beyond the subject of parenting.
Adapted into Cantonese by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, the play is well-paced and entertaining but lacks the satirical edge, especially on Western bourgeois values and hypocrisy, that made the original such a great piece of theatre. It could be a case of the satire being lost in translation by Sonia Au, or absent under the direction of Roy Szeto.
Ko Hon-man (below left) plays Alain, an arrogant lawyer and father of the assaulting boy. His restrained performance hints at the tension simmering underneath all that false geniality.
Less convincing was Tan Hui-lei's Veronique, the moral crusader and mother of the other boy, whose displeasure seems too superficial. Poon Chan-leung (below right), who plays her pacifist husband, Michel, a self-made wholesaler, is as subtle as Ko but there is a darker side to his character (who has a racist streak) that wasn't explored. Pang Hang-ying plays the repressed Annette with restraint, thus making her final emotional outburst quite explosive.