God of Murder

The plot of the play begins with the meeting of the parents of two boys, between whom there was a fight in the park. At first, the conversation takes place in a balanced, “cultural” way, but with every minute there are features and discrepancies - the tension builds up. Good manners give way to mutual accusations and grievances. The characters gradually abandon what falls out — manners and socially accepted poses — and become increasingly hostile, even alien. The meeting turns into a violent confrontation, in which emotions once released take precedence over moderation, restraint and reason. Art is a picture of the social fiasco that is the inability to go beyond one's own selfishness, which is a barrier that is difficult to cross, effectively blocking all efforts to reach mutual understanding between people, even in the simplest of seemingly simple matters.

“The God of Murder” is a comedy of manners. Reza, like Molier more than two centuries earlier, with the use of a light theatrical form, exposes everything that is lying and disturbing in us, but how meticulously hidden under layers of various masks and conventions. An exquisitely constructed art about human relationships, but also about the murder of modern parenting, exposes false ideological and pedagogical assumptions, accurately showing how easily adults come to behave much less mature than what they expect from their own children. Reza creates a caricatured portrait of people trapped in social roles whose facade breaks down with surprising ease under the onslaught of unbridled passions. Does not each of us, losing control of our emotions, release the egoistic nature buzzing under the fragile layer of civilization, or do we not too easily succumb to the instinctive impulses that spring from under the forms imposed by education and upbringing? Reza, with a hint of black humor, shows how thin the line is between what is declared and what is real, between social order and linguistic correctness, and internal, emotional chaos.

Since its release in 2006, the play has been shown with great success on stages all over the world, and in 2011 it was also filmed — under the title “Slaughter” — by Roman Polanski.