Madam, – Fintan O’Toole described the Gate’s production of God of Carnage as “one of the crassest pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen” (Weekend Review, February 12th). Might I respectfully suggest, as one of the cast, that he missed the point of the play by miles and, might I add, that a person of such a delicate sensibility should stay well away from the theatre, not to mention town centres, in future.
His main objection to a play he concedes is “a lovely package with lots of laughs” is that it is morally tone deaf. He is especially appalled that the character of Veronica is equally shocked by a racist insult and the destruction of an iPhone. Er, that is the point! This is a cynical play peopled by crass characters, a savage satire on the vacuous middle-classes.
It makes one despair that an esteemed critic and intellectual such as Mr O’Toole should have such a narrow, prescriptive view of what theatre should be; that he should demonstrate such a fear and mistrust of comedy. Laughing, while it is visceral and uncomfortable for the puritan, is not necessarily vulgar.
One would assume that objectivity and a sense of humour are vital to a role as important as the arbiter of taste in Irish cultural life.
What struck me, reading his latest piece of hyperbole, is that Mr O’Toole is the “Veronica” of Irish journalism. As the character herself says in the play “I don’t have a sense of humour and I have no intention of acquiring one”. They share a patronising tone, a preening pretentiousness and moralising tendencies, and are both prone to bouts of hysterical outrage on a variety of themes, ranging from the banal to the profound.
The all-too-obvious point of what is essentially a laugh-out-loud comedy is that, beneath our veneer of civilisation, we are all in our various ways “Neanderthals”, capable of saying and doing shocking things. Mr O’Toole’s point is, clearly, that he is not. – Yours, etc,