Yasmina Reza’s Play Returns to Paliz Theater

Iranian theater director Ali Sarabi is staging the play ‘Lord of Carnage’ for the second time this year in Tehran. 

Written by French playwright and novelist Yasmina Reza, the play, directed by Sarabi, was first staged last June and due to the “many requests” of the audience, “we decided to restage it before the current Iranian year is out” in March, ISNA quoted him as saying.

Sarabi also performs as one of the four actors in the work besides Maral Baniadam, Setareh Pesyani and Navid Mohammadzadeh, who also acted in the earlier performance.

The play is about two sets of parents who meet to discuss a matter about their children in a civilized manner. One family’s boy has knocked out the other boy’s two teeth with a stick in a park. As the evening goes on, the meeting degenerates into the four getting into irrational arguments, and their discussion falls into the loaded topics of misogyny and racial prejudice.

The play has been translated into several languages and staged across the globe. In 2011, it was adopted into a movie by French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski under the title ‘Carnage’.

Other plays by Yasmina Reza, 57, whose father is Iranian and mother Hungarian, including ‘Art’ and ‘A Spanish Play’ have been performed in Iran by different theater groups.

Sarabi has also staged ‘Lord of Carnage’ in three Canadian cities, namely Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal last year.

The play is on stage from February 12-March 17 at Paliz Theater located at No. 69, Sepand St., South Azodi St., Karimkhan St.