God of Carnage

I had the wonderful pleasure of being treated to a surprise evening at the theatre by none other than my significant other tonight. Better still, the play itself - God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza - was simply fantastic.

"What happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behaviour of their children? A calm and rational debate between grown-ups about the need to teach kids how to behave properly? Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums and tears before bedtime?"

"The premise that brings the four characters together is simple. In a Paris playground, an 11-year-old boy has hit another boy in the face with a stick. Alain and Annette, the culprit’s parents, played by Ralph Fiennes and Tamsin Grieg, are visiting the apartment of Michel and Véronique, the victim’s parents, played by Stott and Janet McTeer, to work out a way in which an apology might be made. As attitudes to politics, work, money, conscience and, crucially, hamsters are revealed, vast crevasses of disagreement open up, not only between the two couples, but between husbands and wives."

The star-studded cast including the uber-thesp, Ralph Fiennes, hillariously depict the hypocrisyand self-deceipt arising from the assumption of superiority felt to be inherrent in being adult and Western.

Witnessing an outrageously rotund American lady destroy her seat with the aid of gravity midway through the production only added to the guilty pleasure of seeing the social carnage on stage.