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After the tremendous success of the Maltese version of Yasmina Reza’s comedy Le Dieu du Carnage at St James Cavalier, Valletta, last November, Faraxa Publishing announces the publication of Prof. Toni Aquilina’s translation from the French original, including a set of 12 key photos from the performance itself.
The world-famous author and playwright Yasmina Reza is first and foremost an actress. Her comedies have been described as acting showcases, displaying a real understanding of the relationship between actor and script. With an ear for what works on stage, her dialogue is often extremely sharp.
She also has an uncanny ability of presenting human interactions and character-driven material focused on relationships. Audience interest in her works has ultimately helped to make Reza one of the most important figures in contemporary theatre worldwide.
Born in Paris in 1959, Reza is the daughter of a Hungarian violinist mother and a successful businessman of Russian-Iranian descent. She studied theatre at the University of Paris X in Nanterre and later pursued her acting ambitions at the internationally renowned Jacques Lecoq Drama School in Paris.
As an actress, Reza did not feel stimulated enough intellectually, so she took to writing her own plays in between roles. She completed her first play, Conversations après un enterrement, in 1987 and immediately won the Molière Award for Best Author.
Since then, Reza has never looked back. International acclaim, however, came with her third play, Art, in 1995. Reza has also written screenplays for films and a number of novels, which have also been published in many countries besides Europe. In 2010 she directed her first film Chicas, staring Emmanuelle Seigner.
In 2006, Le Dieu du Carnage/L-Alla tal-Ħerba became an instant hit when it premiered on stage in Zurich and in Paris two years later. Not so long ago, Roman Polanski directed its cinematic version, Carnage, starring Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet.
Before Le Dieu du Carnage begins to unfold on stage, two 11-year-old boys, Ferdinand and Bruno, get involved, we are told, in an argument, with the former knocking out two of the latter’s teeth with a stick.
The curtain is then raised on the parents of both children having a meeting to discuss the matter. Ferdinand’s father, Alain, is a lawyer who is always on his mobile phone, while his wife Annette is rather snobbish.
Bruno’s father, Michel, is a self-made wholesaler with a sick mother; while his wife, Véronique, is, you could say, an idealist. As the evening progresses, the meeting degenerates into irrational arguments and the discussion falls into the loaded topics of mistrust of women, racial prejudice and homophobia, among others.
Prof. Aquilina is from the University of Malta’s Translation and Interpreting Studies Department at the Faculty of Arts. His translation of Dieu du Carnage/L-Alla tal-Ħerba can be bought from leading bookshops in Malta and Gozo or directly from the publisher.
www.faraxapublishing.com