The God of Carnage

Photo: Krafft Angerer
By Yasmina Reza
Translated from French by Frank Heibert, Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
Theatre
With English Surtitles
Depot 1
Premiere:
27 January 2023

Trailer
next dates & tickets
https://www.schauspiel.koeln Schauspiel Köln Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Köln
Fri 03 May 19.30 - 21.00
Two 11-year-old boys fight on the school playground, one hits the other with a stick, the other loses two incisors. Among civilised people, as the parents are, one talks things through together. So Alain and Annette discuss over coffee and biscuits with Véronique and Michel how to influence Ferdinand (the perpetrator) and Bruno (the victim) in a pedagogically correct way, as consensual and politically correct as it should be nowadays in our Western societies. But unexpectedly, more archaic impulses break through. Who was the culprit after all? From teasings to verbal fights, from verbal fights to fisticuffs, the afternoon degenerates into a hall battle. With diabolical humour and merciless accuracy, Yasmina Reza's play skewers modern bourgeois society, which is torn between enlightened goodness and all-too-human, egoistic competition. As obliging and cotton soft as we may pretend to be, in the end one person keeps the upper hand: the God of Carnage.

As the originally planned premiere of THE PROCESS has, due to illness, be postponed to the 2023/34 season, we are delighted that director Tristan Linder, who began his theatre career in Cologne as an assistant director, will now stage Yasmina Reza's successful play at short notice

direction: Tristan Linder
costume design & stage assistance:
Composition & musical arrangement: Alexander Schweiss
Lighting: Michael Frank
dramaturgy: Sarah Lorenz