Broadway review by Adam Feldman
But is it art? That is the question, familiar to students of 20th-century aesthetics, that hangs at the center of the French playwright Yasmina Reza’s 1994 comedy of manners and men. Serge (Neil Patrick Harris) has paid a fortune for a large painting, by a celebrated artist named Antrios, that is almost totally white. His old friend Marc (Bobby Cannavale) is outraged by this purchase, which he considers a grave insult to common sense and, by extension, to his own good influence. Their perpetually flustered common pal Yvan (James Corden), caught in the middle, tries in vain to accommodate them both while retaining their love, as though mommy and daddy were getting a divorce.
Even in 1998, when Art debuted on Broadway, this framework was more than a little passé, rehearsing arguments about modern art that probably peaked around 1965. In the play’s current Broadway mounting, directed by Scott Ellis, those discussions seem even quainter—and all but irrelevant to the seismic gaps that have opened up in recent years. This iteration is ostensibly set in the U.S., so the francs of the original have been exchanged for dollars, but the names and the overall sensibility remain quite French (with a twist of British via Christopher Hampton’s translation). If you squint very hard, you may make out faint suggestions of contemporary American resonance—in Marc’s blustering contempt for elite tastes, for example, or Serge’s dismissal of him as a “nostalgia merchant,” or in the overall teasing of male fragility—but then again, you might just be imagining things.
Art | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
To the extent that the play takes modern-art questions seriously, it presents them a bit unfairly: From a distance, the audience can’t see the tiny striations of off-white coloration that supposedly distinguish the painting, so it’s easier to dismiss it. But the merits of monochromatics are not really what Art is about. David Rockwell’s scenic design places the men’s nearly identical homes against a vibrant background that, perhaps intentionally, evokes Yves Klein’s singular explorations of blue. But the Antrios itself is, almost literally, a blank canvas; it functions as a screen on which the three characters can project their various issues—and, perhaps more important, on which the three actors can show off their colors.
Art | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Although Art is not especially deep—Reza paints her characters in broad strokes but thin layers—it is solidly built for comedy, and all three men are armed with effective one-liners as their mutual exasperation builds to a climax. With his raspy voice and commanding physical presence, Cannavale is less waspish than the usual Marc, but his bluster hides a core of hurt feelings; this plays nicely off Harris’s self-satisfied but prickly and defensive Serge. It is Corden, however, who dominates the stage and the audience’s affections. In part that’s because of how the part is written—Yvan is more emotional than the others, and Alfred Molina likewise ran off with the original—but it also demonstrates Corden’s enormous comedic talents as a stage actor. The ingratiating quality that can sometimes cloy on television is a perfect match for Yvan’s desperate eagerness to please, and Corden spins it into comic gold.
The result is a slender but amusing 90-minute evening of Broadway entertainment. Is it art? Maybe not. But why argue?
Art. Music Box Theatre (Broadway). By Yasmina Reza. Translated by Christopher Hampton. Directed by Scott Ellis. With Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
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Art | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
