Serge has bought a new painting. It’s modern art, white on white, and his friend Marc is outraged that Serge would spend so much money – 160,000 euro – on a painting he finds so ridiculous. Their friend, Yvan, is on Serge’s side for the most part: let him have his indulgences, let him enjoy an art-form he loves, let’s not criticise something just because Marc doesn’t understand it.
Art (or “Art” as it was
published), by French playwright Yasmina Reza, was first produced in 1994. It debuted
on the West End, translated by Christopher Hampton, in 1996 and moved to Broadway in 1998. It won the Tony Award for Best Play and ran for over 600
performances.
I have
previously seen Reza’s Life x 3 and God of Carnage and I went in
prepared for upper-middle class adults tearing each other down, but in “Art”,
I appreciated what the play was actually saying. (Carnage is about two
sets of parents trying to negotiate after one son hit another in the school
ground, but all I left feeling after that play was that “boy, adults can be
childish, too”.)
Serge
(Damon Herriman) is a divorced dermatologist, who is well-off but not rolling
in money. Marc (Richard Roxburgh) is quite over-the-top in response to Serge’s
purchase, but as time and the arguments roll on, his real fears start bubbling
to the surface. Yvan (Toby Schmitz) is younger than the other two friends and
is just about to get married, though wedding plans are starting to overwhelm
him. Yvan acts a lot younger than his mates, but in many ways he’s the most
emotionally mature of the trio; he got something out of six years of therapy!
The real
joy of Reza’s play is that on the surface it’s about what makes art “art” or
ART. There’s a tension in trying to reconcile people’s different reactions to
an ostensibly blank canvas, but it would feel too one-note if that’s what the
show ended up being a treatise on. Marc has some interesting things to say
about pretension and the “thrill of the new” but what these three friends
really need to discuss is what makes friendship “friendship”. Why, after all
these years, are these guys still friends?
Reza’s text
is robust and cheeky and the right side of satirical, without sacrificing the
realism of three middle-aged men confronting their life choices. It’s a thirty-year-old
play that feels set in the 1990s, even if the production doesn’t want you to
think about that. The play is ostensibly set in Paris, too – but there’s some
fun to be had with the laconic Aussie accent arguing about “deconstruction”.
Lazy stereotypes about women abound, but even then Reza might be onto something
when she’s depicts men who call their wives “hysterical” but are often shining
examples of the epithet themselves.
Herriman’s
Serge is stuffy and superior in his beige suit. Roxburgh’s Marc is all in
black, striding around as if he’s much more down-to-earth but actually as much
of a wanker as Serge. Schmitz steals the show with an Yvan who is hilariously awkward,
dressed like a teenager who never grew up. The three actors work so seamlessly
together, under the direction of Lee Lewis, who rarely lets the tension break.
Even the occasional direct address to the audience from each character ratchets
up the tension, rather than relieves us of it.
Art is one of the plays where the
humour is additive – the more you get to laugh at these characters, the
funnier everything seems. But there’s real heart in this play, a critique of a
world where men cannot articulate their feelings – about themselves, their
friendships or art.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
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