Star-studded cast relishes this brutally amusing aesthetic battle

Art ★★★★
Comedy Theatre, until May 17

A vicious argument over an art purchase derails an old friendship in Yasmina Reza’s satirical three-hander, Art. The 1994 play was revived on Broadway last year starring Bobby Cannavale, Neil Patrick Harris and James Corden, and the casting of this new Australian production has celebrity lustre, too, with Richard Roxburgh, Damon Herriman and Toby Schmitz stepping into a brutally amusing ring of aesthetic dispute.

Conflict erupts when Serge (Herriman) buys a painting – an all-white painting, on an all-white canvas, with a couple of modest streaks, also white, running across it – for an eye-watering sum. His old mate Marc (Roxburgh) can’t believe it. He despises the painting, denounces it as “shit”, and develops an almost monomaniacal obsession with how awful it is.

Standing his ground, an offended Serge defends the artwork and strikes back against Marc’s unrestrained scorn. The aesthetic battle soon gets pitched and personal; the warring parties start crossing red lines, and their mutual friend Yvan (Schmitz) tries to appease both sides.

His diplomatic efforts backfire. Yvan’s sharp-tongued friends view him as a fence-sitter and turn their combined wrath on him. As passions and pretensions continue to fly, and with no middle ground, it seems either the painting or the friendship will have to go.

Art is as much about the contours and power dynamics of male friendship as it is about traditional hierarchies of aesthetic value. Both come under humorous scrutiny in a play that develops from a seemingly trivial premise, then quips and bickers and builds with Seinfeld-like obsessiveness into a post-industrial comedy of manners, fuelled by the bruised egos of self-appointed sophisticates, and an almost solipsistic sense of outrage at a perceived crime against taste.

Although the performances use neutral Australian accents, Lee Lewis’ production retains traces of a rather French approach to comedy, and Roxburgh works physical clowning into the mix. His Marc – slightly raffish, arrogant, combatively intellectual – has an anaphylactic reaction to bad art. He seems to loathe the painting so much that it causes him actual physical pain.

Marc’s spiked sense of superiority disguises darker and more pathetic truths, and there’s a complex charge in the battle between Roxburgh and Herriman, whose snaky, wounded Serge has a sincerity so relentless it might provoke the cynic in anyone.

As the man in the middle, Schmitz’s Yvan proves a broad comic foil for the extremity of the play’s antagonists, and he delivers the role’s highlight – a massively rambling and self-absorbed monologue (and truly epic whinge) – to instant applause.

Art is thought-provoking comedy that doesn’t skimp on entertainment, and Lewis’ assured, consistently droll production is a rare chance to see stars of this calibre live in a modern classic.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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