The gloves are off with Tampa Rep’s ‘God of Carnage’

Discomfort was never so entertaining.

Voyeurism takes on a whole new meaning with the Tampa Repertory Theatre production of God of Carnage, by French playwright Yasmina Reza, onstage through Sunday in the Hillsborough College Ybor City campus theater.

The play consists of one long, frequently interrupted conversation between two married couples, Veronica and Michael Novak (Georgia Mallory Guy and Andrew Deeb) and Alan and Annette Raleigh (Christopher Marshall and Courtney Elvira).

The Raleighs have agreed to visit the Novaks’ home to discuss a recent schoolyard dustup involving their 11-year-old sons. The couples, who have not previously met, want to talk things out, calmly and rationally, over expressos and light hors d’oeuvres.

That’s not exactly what happens. Insinuations and sarcasm turn to browbeating and insults; everyone’s chain is pulled, and just when it looks as if things have simmered down, somebody else lunges back in.

The Novaks (Deeb and Guy).

God of Carnage, which won the Tony for Best Play in 2009, is a brutal drama with moments of great, escape-valve-level hilarity.

Then again, it can be viewed as a very dark comedy laced with pointed truths about the savage that exists within us all, regardless of the civility we display on the outside.

Not since the Off-Central’s January production of Gruesome Playground Injuries has vomit played such a pivotal role in a play.

Tampa Rep director Alexis Carra Girbés has staged this production in the round, so that every audience member is literally up close and personal with Veronica, Annette, Michael and Allen and their three-dimensional trainwreck of an encounter.

This was done for a very specific reason. “It’s in the round,” she explained, “because I wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable in a way that they’re watching something unfold that they’re a little bit embarrassed or shocked to see, but they can’t turn away.”

Originally, said Girbés, she and Tampa Rep artistic director Emilia Sargent envisioned their God of Carnage as a literal boxing match. “We thought about it being in the round in that way. When you’re watching a boxing match, you’re on all sides.”

The Raleighs (Elvira and Marshall).

At one point, they even considered putting ropes around the set, like a pugilistic ring, with a bell denoting each new round of “combat.” They wisely decided that would be a little obvious, if not kind of unnecessary. Even kitschy.

Tampa Rep does not have its own regular performance space, so the four actors and their director rehearsed in a small room inside Tampa’s vintage Kress Building, where many of the city’s arts organizations work.

“And then when we got into the actual space, it changed again,” Girbés recalled. “The larger space allowed us to expand the power dynamic of who’s trying to win in this moment, who’s backing down, who’s on who’s side … and in some ways I was actually able to see it clearer. In rehearsal, I’d been basically sitting on the set with them.”

While Veronica can be shrewish and brittle, Michael a primitive schlub, Alan a self-obsessed twit and Annette mousy and flighty, they each make rational observations – every once in a while – about human nature.

“The point is, no one wins,” Girbés said. “Everyone has moments where what they’re saying feels, to the audience, totally right.”

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