PacRep gives Yasmina Reza’s layered God of Carnage the depth it deserves.

French playwright Yasmina Reza has built an awesome career out of class struggle. The former actress-turned-playwright/author has won or been nominated for Moliere awards (the French Tonys), Laurence Olivier awards (the British Tonys) and actual Tonys since 1987’s Conversations After a Burial, on through to 2007’s high-grossing farce God of Carnage, also adapted into the 2011 film by Roman Polanski, starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. So God of Carnage comes with credentials.

The play locks the audience into a home with two couples whose sons have had an altercation. Pharmaceutical lawyer Alan (Cassidy Brown) and wealth management executive Annette (Julie Hughett) have an 11-year-old named Benjamin who used a stick to knock out two teeth of another boy, Henry, and are visiting the middle-class home of that boy’s parents, plumbing and household fixtures wholesaler Michael (Tim Hart) and writer Veronica (Rebecca Dines).

It opens as the two couples, at first obsessively polite, are trying to work out some kind of civilized resolution. But their negotiation of what happened to their kids and how it’s to be resolved devolves into cross-feuding that reveals, under their civilized veneers, frenzied ids that want to smash the social conventions they otherwise struggle to uphold.

Veronica, mother of the “victim,” is a liberal who’s writing a book on Darfur, congratulates herself on her culture and manners, and wields a sense of moral superiority in driving the conversation forward. Her husband Michael is a salesman and working-class fella who’s trying to enjoy an easy stretch of life by not imposing his true feelings.

Annette, mother of the “aggressor,” is uptight and nervous, and holds tightly onto decorum (actress Hughett twists her “been” like “bean”). Her husband Alan is an impatient and egotistical lawyer who constantly takes cell phone calls to berate co-workers.

Reza relishes the opportunity to tear apart a middle-class facade to reveal baser interiors.

“Benajamin, armed with a stick… ” Veronica, says, trying to establish the facts that led to her son getting two teeth knocked out.

“What do you mean ‘armed’?” objects Alan. He complains that it’s a word “deliberately designed to rule out error or clumsiness, to rule out childhood.”

Michael and Veronica withdraw the word and offer, instead, “furnished.”

It gets worse. Or, if you like the kind of sleeves-rolled-up verbal and emotional duke-out of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, better. “My son has injured another child,” Alan says.

“On purpose,” says Veronica.

“See, that’s the kind of remark that puts my back up,” he replies, irritated.

The couples thrust and parry with more and more candor and rancor. All the actors play it with a restraint that breaks down – Dines, as Veronica, with more gusto than seems sustainable, breaking down faster and more loudly than the others. Brown, playing lawyer Alan, makes it a pleasure to watch his irritability grow into hostility. His wife, Annette, as played by Hughett, crumbles into hysteria and physical ailment before we find that she’s got more gumption than her husband gives her credit for. Tim Hart’s portrayal of the affable Michael is likable, then he launches into sudden rages that are more psychotic than amusing.

And the play, armed – furnished – with a commanding understanding of middle-class norms, is funny and urbane.

It’s constructed clockwork tight, and the direction of the characters by Kenneth Kelleher in the tastefully realized living room sometimes moves like dance choreography. But it’s the ensemble acting – rapid cross-arguments, acerbic rejoinders, backhanded compliments – that stoke the fire by which the Circle Theater audience, in the nicely renovated wrap-around performance space, warmed their humor hackles.

The fighting isn’t just between the couples. They take gender sides, turn on spouses, on their kids, on themselves.

When Alan keeps taking calls from his office, his wife Annette snaps – “That cell phone makes mince meat out of our lives… anything happening somewhere else is more important!”

It’s a funny group self-immolation, but there is a void missing in the relationships where love and partnership should reside. Reza, who’s been labeled a topical playwright, could have plumbed deeper, but then the play would have bruised more and it wouldn’t be as fun. And, for all its class issues and comedy of manners, for all its histrionics and slapstick, for all its awards and attention, it is a fun play.

GOD OF CARNAGE is performed 7:30pm Friday and Saturday, 2pm Sunday, with additional days starting June 27, through July 14, at Circle Theatre of the Golden Bough Playhouse, Casanova between Eighth and Ninth, Carmel. $16-$38; discounts for senior over 65, students, teachers, active military. 622-0100, www.pacrep.org

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