THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
F R I D AY, J A N U A RY 1 3 , 2 0 1 2
As Good As Broadway!
Fort Myers, Florida
BY TERRY TEACHOUT
I'm delighted to report that Florida Rep's
staging, directed with hair-trigger
precision by Dennis Lee Delaney, is at least
as good as the Broadway version, and better
in one respect: The casting is less predictable. On
Broadway, the presence of James Gandolfini and
Jeff Daniels signaled from the start that the
husbands weren't as nice as they looked. Not so
Craig Bockhorn and Chris Clavelli, whose
transformation into beasts of prey is a well-kept
surprise. Shelley Delaney is properly insipid as
Mr. Clavelli's mousy wife, and Carrie Lund
couldn't be better as the self-righteous hostess
who disintegrates into sniveling hysterics as soon
Chris Clavelli & Carrie Lund in GOD OF CARNAGE
as she knocks back a stiff tot of rum.
"God of Carnage," whose film version was
Mr. Delaney's staging is so fine that you could
released a couple of weeks ago, had already been
use it to teach students how to direct a
making the regional-theater rounds for the past
farce—every piece of body language tells—and
year and a half. Small wonder: Yasmina Reza's
Robert F. Wolin's ultramoderne living-room set
four-character stage farce, which tells the tale of
tells you all you need to know about the social
two well-heeled married couples who come to
pretensions of the characters before they've said a
blows after their children get into a playground
word out loud.
scrap, is a lightweight, deftly wrought comedy of
bad manners that can be mounted without
breaking the bank (it requires a single set).
Having reveled in Matthew Warchus's
star-studded 2009 Broadway production, I was
curious to see how "God of Carnage" would hold
up when played by less familiar faces, so I flew
down to Fort Myers to check out the Florida
Repertory Theatre's production.
Craig Bockhorn, Chris Clavelli, Carrie Lund & Shelley Delaney in GOD OF CARNAGE
"Florida Rep is One of America's Top Repertory Companies!"
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL