The meekest mom goes tiger when you suggest her cub might be deficient. As for competitive dads, seen any sitcoms lately? With us Homo sapiens, success is the flip side of profound insecurity, and in the face of the smallest threat we can revert to caveman or -woman behavior: be-cave-ior, if you will. (Best new word of 2014! Boo-yah!)
Yasmina Reza’s plays peel off the layers of the onion of civilization to make a lasting impression on audiences even as they gulp for air between belly-laughs. Her God of Carnage is known in theatergoing circles as “the show with --” aah, we’ll leave that as a surprise. But we can say that a quartet of upscale, professional, pop-psych-literate parents square off in a surprisingly realistic escalation of a genteel get-together to resolve a playground spat.
Something’s sure to hit close to home at 8 p.m. Thursday, January 16, at Fountain Hills Theatre, 11445 North Saguaro Boulevard. Tickets are $20 to $25 at 480-837-9661, extension 3, or www.fhtaz.org for the production, running through Sunday, January 26.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Jan. 10. Continues through Jan. 26, 2014
