In Yasmina Reza’s comedy of manners “Art,” three longtime friends watch their relationship implode after one of them buys an abstract painting that looks simply like a canvas painted white. Marc bluntly says that spending $300,000 on what he deems a white piece of garbage is insane. Serge loves his purchase and besides, he insists, it’s not actually all white — there are subtle variations someone as close-minded as Marc can’t possibly see. As for the amiable Yvan, he is trying to placate the warring factions.
After its premiere in Paris in 1994, the play swept the theater world’s triple crown of awards, winning the French Molière, the British Olivier and, in 1998, the American Tony. Just two women have won that last honor solo for best play, and Reza is the only one to have repeated the feat, with “God of Carnage” in 2009. Over the past three decades, “Art” has been produced around the world — you can actually see it at the Théâtre Montparnasse in Paris right now — with casts ranging from amateur thespians to prime-time (and late-night) stars such as the ones in the new Broadway revival: Bobby Cannavale as the acerbic Marc, James Corden as the milquetoast Yvan, and Neil Patrick Harris as Serge, the dermatologist ready to go to bat for his white-on-white square.
Let’s end the suspense right away: All three are fine, and Corden — back on Broadway for the first time since his whirlwind of a performance in “One Man, Two Guvnors” in 2012 — is often a lot more than that.
But for an elegantly vicious play that’s meant to draw pearls of blood, the actors, especially Cannavale and Harris, can come off as guarded, as if they’re fencing with blunted tips. Entire arguments hinge on tone, the way someone pronounces a particular remark — subtle variations that don’t always land here. At times, Scott Ellis’s production, at the Music Box Theater, feels like an extended episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” This slight cultural disconnect makes the references to the Pompidou Center and the poet Paul Valéry that Christopher Hampton kept in his translation from the French all the more jarring. And if we are in present-day Paris, why are these Frenchmen discussing the price of a painting in dollars instead of euros?
Reza has said in interviews that “Art” came about at a time when she was in dire financial straits and needed a hit, so she wrote the text for three popular actors she knew from her days onstage. Concerned that any one of them would bail if he felt his role wasn’t as juicy as the others’, she devised the three poles of the triangular relationship to be equal — so much so that since Yvan enters after the others, he gets a tour-de-force speech to make up for his delayed arrival.
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