Take two couples, add liquor, then stir

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Two married couples tiptoe around each other, each duo alternately lashing out at the other and occasionally turning on themselves. At some point, a bottle is uncorked and the principals partake liberally.

The play is "God of Carnage," which opens at the Guthrie Theater this week. You might be forgiven if the play calls to mind "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Or "A Delicate Balance." Or "Dinner With Friends."

Yasmina Reza, a fabulous French playwright who gave us "Art," struck gold with "Carnage," which Roman Polanski is making into a film with Kate Winslet and John C. Reilly. The play also won a Tony for its Broadway run. Reportedly miffed about this is Edward Albee, who feels he owned that territory in "Virginia Woolf."

If you see "God of Carnage," you can appreciate Albee's point. Then again, without demon rum and arguments, where would American theater be?

The Guthrie production features Tracey Maloney, Bill McCallum, Chris Carlson and Jennifer Blagen. The setup: Michael and Veronica have invited Alan and Annette into their home. Alan and Annette's son has bashed their boy in the mouth with a stick. After clucking about how they agree that the incident -- with its broken teeth and fat lips -- was horrible, these couples shed the veneer of civility and roll up their sleeves.

So where might you have heard this before?

In Albee's 1963 potboiler, Martha invites Nick and Honey over to the house for an after-party rump caucus. Martha's hubby, George, ladles out the gin and through the swirling voodoo of the midnight hours, skin is peeled from the backs of every inhabitant. Illusions are erected and shattered, dreams eviscerated, egos dragged through the swamp. At one point, Honey dashes to the toilet to drive the porcelain bus. "God of Carnage" even picks up that note. "Virginia Woolf" might be the most delicious acid bath in theater.

You probably have not seen this 1998 play by Terrence McNally and Jon Robin Baitz, because it bombed at Sag Harbor in a New York test run. Not even the star power of Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason and Rue McClanahan could float the boat. The plot has one couple selling their house and breaking up their long marriage. The second couple are buying the house. A scathing New York Times review said the "marital-warring scenes dig up the skeletons of wretched spouses from 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' to 'Marriage Play.'" That was the generous assessment.

Did someone say "break-up"? Donald Margulies' 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner finds Gabe and Karen as a happily married middle-aged couple who have been friends with Tom and Beth for ages. At dinner, Beth announces that she and Tom are splitting. When Tom gets back into town, he hustles over to tell his side of the story and the play uses flashbacks to show these two couples at various points in their relationships. In the bargain, the breakup of Tom and Beth starts to erode the homeostasis of Gabe and Karen.

This is really sort of a ringer. The play was written in 2010 by Jeff Daniels -- yes, the same Jeff Daniels who appeared in "God of Carnage" on Broadway and opined that he "really liked Yasmina's structure." How much did he like it? Two married couples start the play friendly enough. The Martins invite the Porters to join a pricey vacation trip -- with the Martins offering to pay! This gets twisted into a patronizing insult and what started friendly ends with fangs bared.

This play by Jane Martin isn't about couples, but do you recall why our friends from "God of Carnage" had gathered together? One couple's kid had wounded the other's. In "Good Boys" a father confronts another father in a city park and talk about the incident in which Father A's son went on a shooting spree and killed Father B's son. Father A doesn't want to talk about it, but Father B is on a mission to hash this out. Talky, tense and deep into family stuff, this play gets points as a sideways glance.

Two other plays come to mind if only for their righteous devotion to alcohol, families howling at each other and secret recriminations oozing up out of the wounds: