Since the inciting event of Yasmina Reza’s Art involves the valuation of cultural objects, let’s start at the price point. Would purchasing a $471 orchestra seat to the Broadway revival make you a shrewd culture vulture or a middlebrow schmuck dazzled by celebrity? Make that “celebrity.” James Corden was legit hilarious in One Man, Two Guvnors, but that was 13 years ago, before he became a late-night tryhard and the bane of Balthazar. neil patrick harris still has impeccable sitcom timing. Bobby Cannavale has paid his stage dues for years—whether or not he’s right for the part. Is this cast worth half a grand? Is the play? Reza’s 1998 comedy abounds in witty chuckles and elegant structure, but it remains a slight boulevard comedy: three self-obsessed Frenchmen bickering over a pricey painting.
If I’m depreciating Art to upsell my powers of discernment, you could surmise I’m blinded by my snobbery. Then we could argue the value of criticism. If the prospect excites you, you may be the target audience for Art. It’s clever and chic, like most of Reza’s output. The French-Iranian writer has had three well-received plays on Broadway (and one off called The Spanish Play I wish I could forget). Like her younger compatriot Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother) Reza’s works are inescapably French: philosophical, refined, charmingly pretentious. She writes about upper-middle-class urbanites who present as civilized but underneath seethe with jealousy and sometimes violent aggression. In God of Carnage (2009), she pitted two married couples against each other, turning a living room into a battleground.
By comparison, Art is a breezy frolic with lower stakes. Serge (Harris) has purchased a minimalist white-on-white painting for $300,000. His culturally conservative friend Marc (Cannavale) thinks he’s lost his mind—or is a fool. A third wheel by the name of Ivan (Corden) doesn’t care much about art; he wants to play peacemaker and get a break from his nagging stepmother and fiancée. Serge and Marc, in turn, condescend to Ivan. Ivan passive-aggressively, self-pityingly lashes back. At no point does Marc tell Serge he could have spent the money on a worthy cause—refugees or such—because the play doesn’t bother to reflect any reality except the homosocial puzzle Reza created. Over the course of 90 minutes, the playwright uses a contrived setup (I never believed Serge liked the painting) to stress-test the bonds between these men.
It’s a worthy subject, especially today. Bromance is complicated. It’s not all slap hugs and fist bumps. Among male buddies, there always lurk shades of frenemy, rival and bully. Of course, this comedy premiered years before the so-called manosphere, when Andrew Tate was growing his first pubes. It’s actually refreshing to see guys who are classy and well-spoken, perhaps petty and pompous but not toxic stereotypes. The characters arrive on Broadway through French and then English filters (Christopher Hampton translated), so they have a curious mix of Gallic chauvinism balanced by Brit insecurity. Corden does a fine job as the (unexplained) English friend, whinging deftly through a bravura mid-show monologue about the logistics of his impending wedding.
Staged with customary polish and restrained flair by Scott Ellis, the blankness of the central canvas rather bleeds into the costumes and furnishings by Linda Cho and David Rockwell, respectively. The men are dressed in stylish gray, black or blue solids; the modular set that stands in for their apartments is generically modern. One understands that too much color or scenic flamboyance might upset the orderly chill of Reza’s chessboard, but then it might also introduce a little more character. It was hard to know if it was the play or the cast that prevented me from connecting with the characters on a level beyond smug satire. Corden does a good job evoking sympathy for poor, bewildered Ivan, but then he’s cut off by a throwaway meta line from Serge: “Could we try to steer clear of pathos?” This precedes a comic bit straight out of Henri Bergson’s theory of comedy (the human becoming mechanical) in which the men sullenly eat olives and drop the pits into a metal bowl that goes, ping, with metronomic regularity.
Never having seen Art during its original 18-month run, I wasn’t prepared for how much the material would remind me of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The play and TV shows both orbit around conceited, bougie friends’ repetitive needling and nitpicking, petty differences that spin out into shouting matches. Both are comedies of bad manners with gags based on triggering language: Serge goes into paroxysms of rage when anyone calls the painting “white.” I assume that back in Paris, Reza was more conversant with Georges Feydeau than Larry David (the final episode of Seinfeld aired two months after Art opened). I almost started mentally replacing Serge with George, Marc with Jerry and so forth. Truth is, David and his collaborators created wildly cranky solipsists, but I can spend hours enjoying them. For much less money.
Art | 1hr 30mins. No intermission. | Music Box Theatre | 239 West 45th Street | 212-239-6200 | Click Here For Tickets
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