Never underestimate the pleasure of watching really good actors behaving terribly. Of course you can experience such a spectacle every year around Oscar time. But there is a more sophisticated version of this spectator sport, in which highly skilled stage performers take on roles that allow them to rip the stuffing out of one another, tear up the scenery, stomp on their own vanity and have the time of their lives.That’s what Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden are up to at the Bernard Jacobs Theater, where Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” opened Sunday night under the extremely savvy direction of Matthew Warchus.
