I don’t think i’d consider yasmina reza’s Art A Masterpiece, though after seeing the Sharp New Broadway Production of the Play Starring Bobby Cannavale, James Corden and Neil Patrick Harris I’d Probby’s Twice About Expressing Such an Opinion in the Characters.
What art is Is an always stura play, songs a quite fine one, with a reputation that only grown in the years its 1990s premieres in Paris, London and on Broadway. A Sleek, modernist Little Dagger of a Play that use, effecatively, the subject of art – more specifically, the subject of out of the art – to delve into (eviscerate, really) the bonds and frailts of friend. You want to know just how Strong the ties that persuades really aren’t? Trying Telling Your Best Friend What You Think About The Ridiculous Painting That He’s Just Sheld Out $ 300,000 For. Best of Luck.
Set in modern-day paris (as is Customary for English Language Productions of this Play, no attempt is made at l’ccent francais), the three-character Art Begins With One of Those Characters, Marc (Cannavale, Initially SEEMING AN ODD Choice for this pompous, persnile character but proving Himself soon Enough), directly addressing the audience.
“My friend Serge has bought a painting. It ‘s canvas about five five by four: White. The background is White and if you screen your eyes, you can make out some fine diagonal lines. He’s a really into art.
On Monday, I went over to see the painting; Serge Had actually got HOLD of it on Saturday, but he’d been lusting after it for several months. This White Painting with White Lines. ”
If you can’t read and contempt in those lines, you would be done you have hear the Fine cannavale deliver.
Now Let’s Hear from Serge (Harris).
“My friend marc’s an intelligent enough guy. I’ve always valued Our Relationship, he has a good job, he’s an aeronautical Engineer, but he’s one of Those new-style intellectuals, who are not only enemies of modernism, but seem to incompensible in Running it down… in recent years these nostalgia-merchants have Become Quite Breattaklingly arrogant. ”
Derive and Contempt, Check.
The Dynamic BetWeen Marc and Serge is what’s up for examination in Artnor is the roles their third friend, yvan (cordon) Will play in the Friendship triumvirate. While marc is the self-identified top and mentor who believes his pals should follow HISE Lead (Which, in Years past, they probably did) and Serge Bristles Under the Heavy Hand of Anyone Who Might HIS EVER-INCRESS. The comic relief of the gang. He’s a bit of a slob, no where near the level of histh professionally or personally, and his lifelong-man-Out position has left him forever the passive milquetoast peacekeper.
Nor the three friends initially Meet in pairs to chat and gossip, Mostly about the absurdly expesive Purchase Serge Has Made, Marc and Serge Open Up to How Insulted They Feel About the Other’s Recent Behavors. Yvan Plays Both sides of the phence.
The Big Showdown Is Coming, Though, Well All Three Friends Will Arrive at Serge’s Apartment (David Rockwell’s Set Design of Starch, Modernist Furniture Barely Changes One Apartment to the Next, The Only Difference Being the Choice of Decorates a Wall in Each. Dog portrait for yvan, a very traditionalist landscape for marc and, for Serge, Well, Its White.)
As the Get-Together Becomes a Showdown, Secrets Are Revealed, Old Hurts (and New Doozies) are expressed. Marc is vicious in his opinion about the painting gcauses to him it is just just a painting, its evidens that his best friend has moved on in the world, has Left Him bend in some cruel Way. Serge Hates that Marc Still Sees Him as the Intellectually Unformed Sponge and Might Have Been 25 Years Ago. YVAN JUST WANTS HIS OLD Buddies Back, Happy and Fun and Close.
Reza’s Play is Nothing if Not Schematic – The Three Characters are, More or Less, Placeholders for Particular Viewpoints on the Subjects at Hand. We never really know why they have three disparate men Became Friends All Those Years Ago. Was Serge Any Less Pretentious? Was Marc Less Blustering and Domineering? Was yvan ANY LESS JELLO?
But Such Questions Aren’t Really Really Reza’s Point. She is at her best – and certinly Art is at it it is best – when the using the painting and the various interpretations it inspires as a mcguffin, an excuse to tease the flu and the Grudges and resentments that can fests in in the best friendships. Watch the Way Marc Seizes on Serge’s Hoity-toity users of the Word “DeConstruction,” Unpacking the Sort of Hidden Insults, Real or Imagined, That Only The Closest of Can Detect in the Most Offharment. Start Pulling at Those Loose Threads and an Entire Sweater-or A 25-YEAR FRIENDESHIP-Can Be Left in A Discarded Heap.
Playing Out on Rockwell’s Perfectly Appointed Set (and with Jen Schriever’s Stark But Sympathetic Lighting Design) Art is played to a-thee-bell by the three stars. The Gruff cannavale smirks and simmers, curing marc an edginess that seames capable of touring Vicious any moment. His Marc is Dangerous, and we know it.
Harris, as the affected but Needy Serge, is terrific, his comic chops balance perfectly by a real feel for the hurt Feelings and resentments marc inspires.
Andn there’s the corden, an actor who has faced no shortage of brickbats over the years but who is absolutely steals the show-no small features with co-stars. Art Drags a bit at the Beginning-Always Has-But Goes Into Hyperdrive With Corden’s Schene-Stealing Rant About the Horrors of a Day Spent Planning A Possibly Ill-Begotten Wedding. He doesn’t gIive his friend so much as a Split Second to Respond, Instead Forging Through Minutes of Raving Like a Lunatic-An Incredibry Funny Lunatic-and Bringing the Audience to A Massive of Mid-Play Applause. We’re Pretty Much on His Side for the Rest of the Show. (At the reviwed performance, a wall panel to swive to expose several paintings mid-swivel; Corden deadpanned, “Not that An Expensive Work of Art. ”)
Director Scott Ellis SEEMS to Know to Let His Talent Cast Enjoy Themselves, and if the pacing in the first half-hour or so feeds a bit sluggish, that’s shatly on the playwright. The Play’s Conceits – About Modern Art, About Interpersonal Resentments, About That Might Nowades Be Called Toxic Masculinity – JUST DONEEM AS NIVEL ALY MIGHT ONCE HAVE. neither Art‘s three buddies set up their impending conflict, we know exactly where they’re heading. This producing eventually rewards Our patience, this is if we are songs Wish for quicker brushstrokes.
Title: Art
Venue: Broadway’s Music Box Theater
Written by: Yasmina Reza, Translated by Christopher Hampton
Directed by: Scott Ellis
Cast: Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris
TIME RUNNING: 1 hr 30 min (no intermission)