Are you sitting uncomfortably?

The bourgeoisie get it in the neck on both sides of the Channel in Yasmina Reza's latest class act

Susannah Clapp, Sunday March 30, 2008, The Observer

God of Carnage Gielgud, London W1 & Théâtre Antoine, Paris

Even when things go wrong for Yasmina Reza, they produce a theatrical frisson (she's French). Two-thirds of the way through the first night of her new play, the lights dipped suddenly (the cast carried on so blinklessly that the twilight could have been taken for part of the story) and a Porlocky person emerged from the wings to announce an electrical failure. Was this postmodernism? We were, after all, watching the work of a continental author. Then Cameron Mackintosh (theatre owner) and David Pugh (producer) appeared to say that after a pause the Show Would Go On. So there were cheers and clapping and Blitz spirit, and the enjoyable sense that a story had been born and a premiere turned into an event. People love it when something collapses in the theatre - though perhaps they love it more when they aren't paying for their seats. Reza is a phenomenon, a phénomène, a Phänomen, a fenómeno. Her plays have been translated into 35 languages; the most famous, Art, ran in London for six years, with more than 20 different casts, starting with Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney and Ken Stott, and going on to include Jack Dee and The League of Gentlemen. Last year (in pre-Carla Bruni days), Reza wrote a best-seller about Nicolas Sarkozy in which she managed to be both sugary and sharp.

Now her new play, God of Carnage, first seen in Zurich, is being staged on both sides of what used to be the Channel and is now the Tunnel. At the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, in a production directed by the playwright, Isabelle Huppert is as intricate on stage as on screen: she's that extraordinary thing, an alluring study of affectation; her constantly working hands and facial expressions seem to be engaged in a tango. In Shaftesbury Avenue, a line-up of Reza-sharp actors - Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott - guarantees and justifies full houses... [συνέχεια ΕΔΩ]