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Art
Superb acting and humorous, dynamic interplay bring the first revival of Yasmina Reza’s Tony-award winning play Art into renewed focus.
The play, translated from the French by Christopher Hampton and directed by Scott Ellis, is about male friendship, male dominance, and affirming self-worth. The comedy, with profound questions about how we ascribe value and importance to items considered “art” as a way of bestowing meaning on our own lives, resonates more than ever. Art runs until December 21 at the Music Box Theatre.
When Marc (Bobby Cannavale) visits his friend Serge (Neil Patrick Harris) and discovers Serge recently spent $300,000 dollars on a white modernist painting without discussing it with him, Marc can’t believe it. Though the painting, by a known artist, can be resold for more money, Marc labels the work “shit,” not holding back to placate his friend’s ego. The opening salvo has landed and the painting becomes the catalyst for three friends of 25 years to reevaluate their identities and bonds.
Privy to Inner Thoughts
After addressing the audience with an aside, Marc insults Serge’s taste and probity to his face. Serge then makes the audience his confidante and tells us that Marc is “one of those new-style intellectuals, who are not only enemies of modernism, but seem to take some sort of incomprehensible pride in running it down.” What standards is Marc using to ascribe his valuable painting as “this shit?”
That’s one theme of the play: the arbitrary conditions around assigning value to objects, people – anything. Marc doesn’t accept the opinions of experts on modernism, or on this painter’s work. He asserts his opinion through the force of his ego and friendship with Serge. But the white canvas capsizes the equilibrium their friendship once enjoyed.
A Battle of Egos
We learn through their discussions with their mutual friend Yvan (James Corden) that each of the two thinks the other has lost his sense of humor. The purchase of the painting clearly means something monumental in their relationship. But what? And how does Yvan fit into this testing of their friendship?
Marc’s annoyance that Serge purchased the painting without his input becomes obsessive. Marc vents to Yvan about Serge’s pretensions to be a collector. Marc believes if Yvan tolerates Serge’s purchase of “shit” for $300,000, then he doesn’t care about Serge. Tying himself in knots, Marc considers what kind of friend wouldn’t be concerned about a friend getting scammed out of $300,000?
Who’s Influencing Whom?
In the next humorous scene between Yvan and Serge, Yvan sets up Serge, who excitedly shows him the painting. As Marc expected, Yvan stays on the fence about Serge’s purchase, not wanting to offend him. But Yvan disputes Marc’s impression that Serge lost his sense of humor. Yvan has no problem upsetting Marc by describing how he and Serge laughed about the painting. Yvan tells him he didn’t “love the painting, but he didn’t hate it either.”
Through this absurd situation Reza explores each man’s weaknesses, and their ridiculous behavior centering on whose perception is superior. Teasing the audience by incremental degrees and prompting our laughter, Reza brings each character to a boiling point. The play works because the characters become each others’ foils as they attempt to assert dominance.
James Corden Brings Down the House
Ironically, Yvan establishes his own power in victimhood. He arrives late for a dinner, his frenzied monologue exploding like a pressure cooker and stopping the show. The evening I saw the production, the audience applauded and cheered Corden for Yvan’s histrionics about his two fighting stepmothers, his fiancée, and his father who holds him hostage about names on his and his fiancée’s wedding invitations. Corden delivers Yvan’s lament at a fever pitch with lightening pacing. Just mind-blowing.
The versatile Neil Patrick Harris plays Serge as a reserved, erudite, true friend who “knows when to hold ’em and knows when to fold ’em.” Cannavale reveals Marc’s assertive personality and insidiously sardonic barrel laugh with authenticity. Underneath the macho mask slink inferiority and neediness.
Together the three reveal men at their worst. Their individual power wanes as they dodge verbal blows and make preemptive strikes that hide a multitude of implied issues. They especially have problematic relationships with women.
Exceptional Together
The humorous dialogue shines with wit and irony. Even more exceptional are the actors, who stomp around in the skins of these flawed characters who do remind us of ourselves during times when passion overtakes rationality. The play mostly lands, with Ellis’ finely paced direction, seamless staging, and nuanced ironic undertones. The grey-walled set (David Rockwell) reflects the similarity among the characters and their apartments (with the exception of a different painting in each one).
Reza’s play feels more current than one might imagine. More than ever, culture mavens and influencers revel in promoting and buying brands as a sign of cachet. A Birkin bag brings questions about what an item’s true worth is and what that “worth” means to each beholder. Commercialism is about creating envy and lust and the illusion of value. To what extent are we all duped? Does Marc truly care that his friend may have fallen for more hype than value? Yvan has his own problems to contend with. How can he move beyond “I don’t like it, I don’t hate it”?
Art runs through Dec. 21 at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre.
