No Kidding! Gandolfini, Harden, Daniels & Davis Preview God of Carnage
Originally written in French by Reza Art, God of Carnage premiered in Zurich on December 8, 2006, before debuting on London’s West End on March 25, 2008, with Matthew Warchus directing a translation by Christopher Hampton and a cast that included Ralph Fiennes and Janet McTeer. The U.S. premiere, which brings Warchus back to Broadway after helming last year’s Tony-winning Boeing-Boeing, resets Reza’s story in New York City.
The Parent Trap
Given that all four stars are parents in real life, God of Carnage connected with each of them just on its setup alone. “There’s no way that this can end well,” Daniels says of a dinner designed to get to the bottom of one child hitting another. “Parents have this thing when it comes to their child and other parents. I’ve had this conversation with my wife: ‘Call her up and tell her that if I wanted her advice on parenting, I’d ask for it.’ You don’t parent someone else’s child.”
“Matthew calls the play a really funny tragedy,” adds Harden. “Our characters all want to be on our best behavior and do the right thing. We think of a thousand ways to couch our feelings with something polite. Yet it just unravels.”
“We don’t want to be like the children,” agrees Davis, who plays the wife of an arrogant lawyer portrayed by Daniels. “We want to try to be grownups.”
Gandolfini, sporting a new goatee, jokes that such a scenario wasn’t possible when he was a kid in New Jersey. “I can’t imagine my parents meeting with another set of parents to have this discussion,” he says. “But it’s a different world now. You’re involved in everything about your child.” When his eight-year-old son started school, Gandolfini noticed how often he was going there, too. “I think that’s good in the beginning, but it takes a little getting used to,” he says, adding with a laugh, “especially if you weren’t thrilled about school the first time around, you break into a sweat just being around the lockers.”
French to English, English to American
On tailoring Hampton’s translation for Broadway, Gandolfini says, “There’s about 90 percent of the original language there.” Harden emphasizes that the goal was “not to reduce the language to something like [she assumes an extreme, hick-sounding accent] ‘Hey, I wanna go do this,’ but to use the beauty of the language yet maintain its familiarity.”
“Just stuff that’s a little less English-sounding,” Daniels says of script tweaks. “If it was, ‘Shall I get you a drink?’ we changed it to ‘Can I get you a drink?’”
“Plus, our curse words are just not as interesting,” Davis quips, “and there are a lot fewer of them. We just use those couple of ones, over and over again. The French have a lot more colorful ways of saying certain things.”
As for the story’s Manhattan transfer, that was an executive decision by Reza and Warchus. “So no one could say, “Oh, that’s how they behave in Paris or London,’” says Davis. As Daniel sees it, “The play’s more accessible, too, when there’s no filter. We can pull the audience right up there onstage with us.”
Stagestruck
Collectively, the career achievements of the God of Carnage cast include an Oscar Harden for Pollock, an armload of Emmys Gandolfini for The Sopranos, plenty of box-office hits Daniels in Terms of Endearment, Dumb & Dumber plus a small mountain of indie credibility About Schmidt, American Splendor and seemingly anything else Davis appears in. But it's been a while since any of the starry foursome has appeared on Broadway.
Gandolfini hasn’t been onstage since 1995’s On the Waterfront. Harden’s last extended run was in Simpatico at the Public in 1994. “It’s been over eight years for me,” says Davis, referring to her turn in off-Broadway’s Spinning Into Butter. “It’s extremely daunting and exciting, and we’re all nervous and not sleeping that well. I’ll speak for myself in that case.”
“He sleeps,” says Gandolfini, jabbing his thumb at Daniels, who not only appeared last spring in Manhattan Theatre Club’s Blackbird but who now enjoys an empty nest, since the youngest of his three kids recently graduated from high school. “I’ve had a couple of kids since I went onstage last,” says Davis, “so my brain is at 50 percent of the power it used to be. I want to see if I can still do it. It’s a challenge, but we’re all excited to have that challenge again.”
“And it’s fun!” adds Harden. “The play is hysterical. It’s outrageous and it’s very, very funny. I haven’t been so happy to go to work in a long time.”
“We’ve all been in projects where you had to make up for something,” says Daniels. “Maybe by acting for two people and hoping, ‘Somehow I’ll make this work.’ That’s not the case here. Everybody here can bring it—the playwright, the director, the cast, the production. Everybody’s going to arrive at the first preview, on opening night and every night after and bring it.” The other three nod, silently. “Broadway’s still a great place. When it works, it beats movies every time.”
