At Theater Wit, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s production of Yasmina Reza’s Art is beautiful, insightful, and fully realized.
Reza’s 1994 play, originally written in French and translated to English by Christopher Hampton, follows middle-aged Parisians Serge, Marc, and Yvan as they spiral dangerously toward breaking up their longtime friendship. Serge has bought an almost entirely white painting for 200,000 francs. His turn toward modern art alarms Marc, who views it as a move away from rationalism and their friendship. Yvan becomes ensnared in the bickering—he is the kind of friend who cannot help but try to smooth things over.
Put quite simply, this production is stunning, particularly considering that Art is not an easy play to put on. It is, for one thing, oh so very French in its characters, dialogue, and overall air of theatrical intellectualism. For another thing, it is a 90-minute one-act play where one scene takes up almost the entirety of the act. The three characters barely leave the stage. For a third thing, with such loquacious characters, it can be easy to lose humanity in pursuit of philosophy. And yet Remy Bumppo pulls it all off.
All three actors are fabulous. Chad Bay, as Serge, mixes just the right amounts of grandiosity, indifference, and real vulnerability. What he really thinks about the white painting remains a mystery to the audience, and rightfully so. It is a mystery to Serge. Justin Albinder, as Marc, matches Bay’s intensity with his own terrifying conviction that he is always right. Marc is the character with whom the audience most sympathizes, and yet he is frequently also the character who is hardest to defend. And, in the middle of it all, as Yvan, Eduardo Curley lends great humor—both endogenous and exogenous—to a play that is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is deeply moving.
Art is not really about the artistic and moral quandaries with which the three friends grapple so much as it is about what their grappling reveals of their relationship. Why, the play (and the three themselves) asks, are these people friends? What keeps us attached to people with whom we once shared whole lives and now don’t even share values? Can two people who see a piece of art in completely opposite ways agree about anything?
The central artwork itself, by fictional Modernist painter Antrios and really by Scenic Designer Lauren Nichols and Props Designer Amanda Herrmann, is massive and sits or hangs on stage throughout the play. It is actually quite beautiful, but in just the sort of detached, anti-traditional way it should be. In fact, everything in Art is beautiful in such a Modernist, French manner. Serge, Marc, and Yvan’s squabbles seem appropriately silly when played within Art’s massive, white-walled set, the ceiling of which hangs far above them. Their clothes, too—Costume Designer Kristy Leigh Hall’s neat assembly of white, gray, and tan sweaters and slacks—capture both the friends’ affluence and their desire to stand out from one another. Marti Lyons’s fully assured direction and confident blocking ties everything together. If the above sounds like a laundry list of theatrical elements, then alas. But rarely has this reviewer seen a play as fully and beautifully realized as this production of Art.
“It represents a man who moves across a space that disappears,” Marc, eventually somewhat appreciative of the painting, says in one of the play’s tastefully staged asides. Such is art, and such is Art: fleeting, of a time and place, and, when it’s at its best, transformative.
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s production of Yasmina Reza’s Art, translated by Christopher Hampton, played at Theater Wit through June 1.
