Train wrecks, plane wrecks and major maritime disasters can be fascinating in a morbid sort of way when observed from a safe distance and not as one of the victims. Why else do drivers slow down to look at accident victims sorting things out at the side of the freeway?

Contemporary playwright Yasmina Reza serves up that sort of attraction with her Tony Award-winning slice-of-modern-life show, "God of Carnage."

Guest director Vanita Rae Smith and four talented Hawaii-resident actors bring the play to life with all the titular carnage intact at Manoa Valley Theatre.

The premise is simple. Two sets of parents have met to discuss a playground skirmish between their sons. One boy hit the other with a stick and broke two of his teeth.

All four adults agree that kids shouldn’t hit other kids with sticks, let alone break other kids’ teeth. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, the visiting couple stays on to talk when they should have politely departed. An inopportune comment here, a sharp retort there, and the polite, albeit strained, conversation degenerates into a seemingly endless series of insults and arguments in which alliances are broken as quickly as they are made.

At times it’s one couple against the other, at times the men unite against the women or the women unite against the men, and at times one of the men sides with the other man’s wife in defending or attacking one point or another.

All four of them reveal — in thorough and explicit detail — the things they don’t like about their spouses.

Think "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" without the offstage sexual interlude.

Taking it as a given that people who love each other don’t do that to one another — doubly so in front of others — and the MVT production is engaging adult theater.

MVT Producing director Dwight T. Martin makes a welcome return to the MVT stage playing Michael Novak, a mild-mannered, self-made plumbing fixture wholesaler who welcomes the release of his inner Neanderthal.

Martin has some of the most politically incorrect lines in the show and delivers them with the relish of a man enjoying his long-denied freedom.

Stu Hirayama is a perfect fit as Alan Raleigh, a workaholic attorney and disinterested father whose first priority throughout the meeting is defusing via repeated cellphone calls a corporate client’s potentially catastrophic medical liability case.

Tricia Marciel, usually seen starring in musicals, spits and snarls convincingly as Annette Raleigh, a woman fed up with her husband’s lack of personal investment in their marriage and his 24/7 commitment to his cellphone.

Brenda-Lee Hillebrenner completes the talented quartet with an edgy and appropriately off-putting portrayal of Veronica Novak, a social activist who has her own set of hidden grievances and the inability to leave well enough alone.

To say much more about the characters or actors’ performances would spoil some of the many surprises.