Theater Breaking Through Barriers

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God of Carnage

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God of Carnage

The veneer of civilization is thinner than one hopes for in Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony-winning black comedy God of Carnage, admirably revived by Theater Breaking Through Barriers. The set-up is simple. Two couples are meeting after Benjamin, the 11-year-old son of one couple, hit Henry, the son of the other, with a stick and damaged two teeth. Henry’s parents, Michael and Veronica Novak (Dave Fazio and Christiane Noll), pressured him to reveal Benjamin’s name, and they have invited Benjamin’s parents, Annette and Alan Raleigh (Corey Cox and David Burtka) to their well-appointed home to exchange “statements” about the incident.

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The Fourth Wall

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A.R. Gurney, who died in June 2017, was prolific to the end. Like Verdi, Henry James, and Philip Roth (a recently deceased contemporary of Gurney’s), this urbane playwright exercised robust creative powers far beyond customary retirement age. Judging by the number of high-profile revivals since his death (most notably last season’s superb Off-Broadway production of Later Life), Gurney’s wit and insight are still integral to American drama.

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The Healing

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The Healing

Samuel D. Hunter is no stranger to writing about people with physical disabilities—or people living in Idaho, where he’s from. His play The Whale (2012), which concerned a morbidly obese man mostly confined to his sofa, won him a special Drama Desk Award. So it makes sense that he’d receive a commission to write a play for Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB), a company that employs actors with disabilities. The result is The Healing, a strange play that fuses religion and faith with the struggle of people who have physical disabilities.

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