‘Art’ is back on Broadway with an all-star cast, but it’s James Corden’s play

NEW YORK — Back in the 1990s, you couldn’t get away from “Art.” It spread like kudzu and moved faster than the lips of a greedy auctioneer at Sotheby’s.

New York, London. Chicago. Long runs of Yasmina Reza’s slick, savvy, star-friendly satire of upper-middle-class mores became ubiquitous. I must have seen the thing a dozen times. Theaters gorged on a minimalist three-character soupçon that needed only one set, if any at all, lasted only 90 minutes, leaving time for both dinner and show, and made audiences feel like consumers of sophisticated aesthetic inquiry without really challenging their tired brains.

Not long ago, people were saying plays like “Art” were everything that was wrong with Broadway — although usually without asking actual audiences. Now “Art,” as translated by Christopher Hampton, is back on the Great White Way with Scott Ellis directing the big box-office draws James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale, all playing dudes sitting around discussing a totally blank painting that just cost one of them a cool three hundred grand.

As you peer from your perch at the painting sitting in the middle of David Rockwell’s cleverly defined set (Rockwell is having some fun at the expense of his interior design clients), there appears to be no “there” there when it comes to that painting.

So was the man prescient? Duped? Ergo, the main question of the evening, as you sit there wondering how you’ll order your post-show steak frites.

Aside from spoofing the contemporary art world, with its insane valuations based on the throbbing insecurities of people with way too much money, “Art” eventually delves into male friendship and the difficulty men, especially middle-aged dudes, have in actually opening themselves up to their friends. You know, as distinct from joshing and sparring and circling each other like wolves gnawing at vulnerabilities. It had to be a woman to write a play about that.

The ace in the hole in Ellis’ revival is Corden, who is just fabulous here. The one-time late-night host doesn’t have the kind of emotional script that made him famous in the British TV show “Gavin & Stacey,” but he doesn’t let that get in his way.

He adds layers of his own, veering from hyper-emotionalism to broad comedy to bravura monologuing. Aside from his skills at comic timing with varied pacing, both of which are formidable, he has figured out how to spin his noggin and actively listen to his fellow performers, or at least make it seem that way. His years as a talk-show host surely helped him there and it really pays off in making the show come alive, drawing out both Cannavale and Harris, who share a more minimalist tack. “Art” really is the James Corden show here. And fair enough.

That said, I enjoyed all three men, actually, partly because Cannavale is the kind of brooding, method-y, Al Pacino-y actor whose presence in this kind of play is so weird and wrong as to be extremely funny. It’s very clever casting. Harris is amusing too, although I wish he’d found more contrast at the play’s big turning point, when a key decision in favor of friendship has to be made. That requires more vulnerability and it’s all a bit rushed here. Harris is a great stage actor, of course, but in the end, his guy has to exit from the freeway of cool detachment.

If you saw “Art” back in its heyday, you likely forgot the finer points of the plot. It is forgettable. But there is no credible arguing with this level of audience-pleasing success. This very fun revival at least makes the case that forgettability can be an asset and “Art’ enjoyed over and over again.

At the Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., New York; artonbroadway.com

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com