ONE of the most popular and acclaimed plays of the last decade, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, is being performed at The Maltings Theatre in St Albans next week.

StageSpell will play host to a breakdown in civilised conversation next week when it stages God of Carnage from next Wednesday, April 10, to Saturday, April 13.

The play has been performed around the world and also made into a film in 2011, the title shortened to Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C Reilly and Jodie Foster.

Disruption lies at the heart of the play which takes place within four claustrophobic apartment walls.

It charts the course of a superficially civilised get-together as two middle-class couples meet to discuss their children’s playground fight.

At first, diplomatic niceties are observed but, as the tensions gradually emerge, the action degenerates into mutual dislike and name-calling.

By the end of the encounter, the veneer of smug, bourgeois respectability is shattered with alternately comic and uncomfortable consequences.

Director, Liisa Smith, is looking forward to unleashing the actors on audiences in St Albans. She said: “Reza is an expert analyst of social hypocrisy and it is hilarious watching the two couples tiptoe around their mutual dislike.

“The characters, including a cynical lawyer and a moral crusader, slowly allow their masks to slip and expose the reality of their relationships with each other and the world around them.”

She added: “It’s great to work with a play that is so accessible but it also makes for unnerving viewing at times and I think this is the mix that has made God of Carnage such a worldwide success.”

Performances are at 8pm and tickets are £10, available online: www.ticketsource.co.uk/ovo, by phone at 0844 8700 887 or in person from St Albans Tourist and Information Centre.