‘Carnage’ Makes Few Converts in New York

A certain kind of L.A. show can be guaranteed to send the New York critics up the wall--the goofy, hairy cartoon that doesn’t have the least semblance of manners. “Division Street” (1980) and “Greek” (1983) were panned for their barbarism, and that seems to be the complaint against “Carnage” at the Public Theatre.

“Carnage” is the Actors’ Gang’s response to money-grubbing TV evangelists. We liked the show’s rudeness, its energy, its unexpected whiffs of Japanese theater and its reminder that the ascetic believer can do more damage than the self-indulgent fraud.

But Frank Rich of the New York Times was outraged. He found the evening ludicrous, amateurish, arrogant, obvious, condescending, reeking of show-biz self-indulgence and--the worst cut of all--”tame.” What was junk like this doing on the stage of the Public Theatre?

Robert Massa of the Village Voice liked Ned Bellamy as the true believer and gave the show credit for a certain “splashy theatricality.” But the message lacked “nuance” and the acting style was “overreaching.” In the end, the result was “triteness.”

Jerry Talmer of the New York Post was a friendly witness. He was reminded of Barbara Garson’s “MacBird,” from the late 1960s. “Carnage,” for Talmer, touched too many bases and shouted too much. “But--but--but it has its points. Good ones.”

Not for Howard Kissell of the Daily News, who ended his review thus: “Perhaps what is needed for New Yorkers to appreciate ‘Carnage’ is an approximation of theatergoing conditions in Southern California. If we had to drive 80 miles constantly on the alert for snipers we might be more receptive than we are after a mere jaunt on the RR.”

So that’s what it’s about: urban transit.

GOOD NEWS. The discovery of traces of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre under a parking lot close to London’s Southwark Bridge. Unlike the remains of the Rose Theatre, this is open space, unthreatened by a development scheme.

BAD NEWS. Carol Channing is considering going out on the road again with yet another revival of “Hello, Dolly!”--this to be known as the 25th anniversary edition. Won’t someone please write a new show for Carol Channing?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. William Shakespeare, on the Globe Theatre (from the prologue to “Henry V”): “Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O the very casques that that did affright the air at Agincourt?”