God of Carnage coming to the Lyric Hammersmith

Image above: L to R Martin Hutson, Freema Agyeman, Ariyon Bakare, Dinita Gohil in God of Carnage at the Lyric, Hammersmith

Interview with actor Martin Hutson

Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage is coming to the Lyric, Hammersmith, for the opening of their autumn season. The play, by the French playwright who also wrote Art, is a comedy which pokes fun at contemporary middle class issues in a way that is both entertaining and slightly uncomfortable. When it was originally produced in the West End it won the Olivier award for Best New Play of the year.

I spoke to Martin Hutson, one of the four actors who play the parents of two eleven-year-old boys who have fallen out, meeting for the first time to try and resolve their issues, as adults. Ferdinand knocked two of Bruno’s teeth out with a stick because he wouldn’t let him be part of his gang.

Ferdinand’s parents are Alan, a lawyer, and Annette, who works in “wealth management”. Bruno’s are Michael, who had his own business as a wholesaler, and Veronica, who is writing a book about Darfur. Martin plays Bruno’s father Michael.

What happens of course is that their relatively thin veneer of civility gradually dissolves as discussions progress into a more base, animalistic representation of themselves.

“It starts with a civilised face and slowly the mask slips. We are all still just animals put into clothing really.”

As an actor Martin has played multiple leads at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and in the West End, opposite such accomplished actors as Dominic West, Ralph Fiennes and Kim Cattrall. His screen credits include the award-winning BBC drama The Honourable Woman, the BBC/HBO epic The Passion and ITV’s The Trial of Christine Keeler.

As a director he has directed Yasmina Reza’s play Art at the East Riding theatre in Beverley near Hull.

“Yasmina Reza’s writing is terrific. It’s funny and simple, so it might seem slight, but it is not. This is a much more complicated play than Art. The couples don’t know each other. There are differences between them – projected biases against one another – and also fault lines within the marriages. It’s like a Rubik’s cube the way the allegiances switch back and forth.

Image above: Cast of God of Carnage in rehearsal

“A classy and exciting production”

“My character is a peacekeeper. He defends whoever his wife is having a go at and then she has a go at him.

“He plays on being a self-made man, although really he isn’t”, says Martin, it was his character’s father who first built the business. “Michael uses language which exposes who he really is.”

The discussion goes into the realm of loaded topics such as sexism, racism and homophobia. The play was first produced in 2008, so I wondered if they had updated it to reflect Brexit, Me too and Black Lives Matter. It seems our social politics have become much tougher since then.

“We have kept to the original play but Director Nicholai La Barrie makes us see the play afresh. The design is really beautiful. He has a vision for it, and we see all sides of these people because of the way the design is done. The casting brings a different flavour to it” (in the original the cast were all white – Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott).

“It has all the ugliness. I feel the world of political correctness has been a force for good on the whole, but it hasn’t educated people. They have learned what not to say, but when they have permission to speak freely all this stuff spills out that they wouldn’t before have said in public.

“No one considers themselves a bad person and we carry all manner of bias from our upbringing.”

I asked Martin about whether he feels uncomfortable playing  the role of a racist, or his character having to defend himself against being called a racist.

He has recently played the role of Bernard, Queenie’s husband, in Small Island at the National Theatre. His character comes home from a Japanese war camp at the end of the Second World War and objects to his house being filled with West Indian immigrants, in no uncertain terms.

“What’s great about Nicholai La Barrie’s vision for this production is that it shows white people don’t have a monopoly on hypocrisy. Everyone has bias.

“It’s a classy and exciting production.”

Joining Martin in the cast is Freema Agyeman as his wife Veronica, best known for her role as the companion Martha Jones in Doctor Who (BBC) as well as Trish in Dreamland (Sky). Freema is making her Lyric stage debut. Ariyon Bakare, who previously appeared in BBC hit-series His Dark Materials, plays Alan. Dinita Gohil, recently seen in the Father and the Assassin (National Theatre) takes on the role of his wife Annette.

God of Carnage runs from 1 – 30 September.

Book tickets: lyric.co.uk

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