God of Carnage

God of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza, is one of those plays where you know something awful is going to go down and you just can’t wait for it to blow up.

The cast, get ready: Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden (as the Beaver).

You guys—if you are in New York, zip right down to see it (Jacobs Theatre, West 45th Street). It you are not in New York, by all means, jump on a plane (big sales right now) and see it.

Look, Yasmina Reza is really smart and really funny. She understands the worst nature of human beings. However, she treats it lightly. She is indicting and forgiving at once, something I aspire to be.

The play is simple: One kid breaks two teeth of another kid in a playground. We never meet the kids. We just watch the two sets of parents talk about it. Jeff Daniels is a nasty lawyer, completely honest about his me-first lifestyle. Hope Davis plays his wife. She attempts to smoothe things over. And is a bit of a puker.

Marcia Gay Harden, the conscience in heels, devolves incredibly beautifully as the mother of the child victim who lost his teeth. James Gandolfini, her long suffering and depressed hardware wholesaler, is wise beyond his station.

All four of the actors are outrageously spot on.

The direction, by Matthew Warchus, is as smooth and deep as Y. Reza’s writing. The set design, grotesquely overstated and understated at once, that is to say, a minimalist apartment-loft in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn expanded to a grotesque size, sets you into rage and quease.

The play is a bit like Albee’s The Goat or Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But who cares! What play isn’t?

The translation from the French by Christopher Hampton is another stroke of brilliance. He replaces all precious-parent Parisian references with precious-parent Brooklyn references, so much so, that one understands my friend Megan’s lament about the place, “The borough that is dead to me.”

Look, once in a while a great play comes along (Let’s remember, she also wrote Art), and when that happens, and you want to be thrilled, you should just do it. Jump over.