For evidence of how high inflation has gotten, look no further than Broadway. The fancy painting at the heart of the play “Art” cost the equivalent of $40,000 in 1998. In a crackling new revival, it’s a hefty $300,000.
The painting in question is a 4-by-5-foot white-on-white work with white lines. Playwright Yasmina Reza puts it at the center of an escalating fight between three male, middle-aged friends that exposes their fault lines, leading to a night in which each are ripped apart by the others and putting a 25-year friendship in jeopardy.
If $300,000 sounds like a ridiculous price for a monothematic canvas, you’ll side with Marc, played with pitch-perfect exasperation by Bobby Cannavale. If the painting speaks to you, you’ll be with Serge, a flinty, slightly full-of-himself Neil Patrick Harris. If you just want to hang out and not talk about the painting any more, you’ll identify with James Corden’s hapless Yvan.
Under Scott Ellis’ tight and enthralling direction and with three perfectly cast actors who seem to be having a ball at the Music Box Theatre, “Art” frequently erupts in laughter but still has plenty to say about friendship, power dynamics and how we get on each others’ nerves. The 90-minute play opened Tuesday night.
This is the first time “Art,” translated from the original French by Christopher Hampton and which won the Tony Award for best play in 1998 starring Alan Alda, Victor Garber and Alfred Molina, has returned to Broadway, and it feels nothing like an antique. Designer David Rockwell puts the latest three lads in an elegant gray, spare living room that reeks of chilly luxury but also has little personality.
Marc believes that Serge — by buying the Modernist painting against the express aesthetic rules followed by Marc — is indicating that he has stepped out of Marc’s shadow. It is for him nothing less than a betrayal. Serge finds a new intolerance and inflexibility in his friend and a hostility to things new. They both lobby Yvan to be on their side, and when he vacillates, he is declared a spineless amoeba.
“It’s just a picture, we don’t have to get bogged down with it, life’s too short,” says Yvan at one point. But it’s precisely because life is short that even small things matter.
Cannavale’s Marc is prone to outbursts and patting his friend’s shoulders, less out of affection than an expression of dominance. Harris’ Serge goes from needy to flinty to icy, and Corden fills his Yvan with the comedian’s gift for physical comedy, literally plunging into a sofa to search for something or looking sheepish as he buttons a jacket.
A highlight is a hysterical scene in which the three men, still festering their grievances, silently eat olives and drop the pits in a bowl with a loud ting. And Corden triggers a mid-show ovation after nailing a 900-word monster of a monologue that smacks of Mark Rylance doing something similar in the same theater in “La Bête.”
“Art” has never been a discussion about Modern art, despite its title. The white painting is merely the playwright’s way to get at microaggressions and competition among friends, and how seemingly small things — like the way one waves away cigarette smoke or the tone of a suggestion — can fester in the other.
Sure, inflation has hit Broadway tickets, too, but this “Art” is a howl. Bring a friend.
