"ART" is for Everyone

By Jana Pollack, New Rep Reviewer

Yazmina Reza’s 'ART' is a brilliant piece of writing. It is a playwright’s play: whip-smart from start to finish, each line deliberate and, well, artful. It follows three middle-aged male friends as they are systematically torn apart by a disagreement over a painting – over what is really art and what it’s worth. Of course, the fight is really about what they’ve been through and what they owe each other, but a newly-purchased white canvas is the catalyst for these cataclysmic discussions.

New Rep gives 'ART' the performance it deserves. Doug Lockwood, Robert Pemberton, and Robert Walsh (as Yvan, Marc, and Serge, respectively) are all powerful performers and a huge amount of fun to watch. So much of the language in 'ART' talks around the point, which could grow tiring in the wrong hands; however, the physicality and comic timing of each actor make it mesmerizing, almost like watching a game of tennis as the power shifts again and again.

The technical aspects of this production are also noteworthy for their contributions to the storytelling. Justin Townsend’s set and lighting are clean and clear, leaving room for the dialogue to do all of the mucking around. David Remedios’ sound design also adds to the complete feeling of the production (as well as getting a few well-deserved laughs).

This is a joy to watch. It raises questions about why we choose the friends we do and why we keep them around; about what kind of people gravitate towards what kind of people and why. It is also simply a riot a whole lot of the time (a major highlight is Yvan’s frantic rant about the women in his life, which drove the audience to applause). This is a great play performed with greatness. 'ART' is for everyone.

"ART" Not About Art, at Root

Johanna Ettin and Shauna Shames
New Rep Reviewers

'ART', the witty and stylish production now on stage at New Rep, is a terrific post-holiday theatrical event choice. It is bold, funny, unsentimental, and at times deeply poignant. Perhaps we could call it a black comedy whose clever humor masks an underlying seriousness.

'ART' isn’t really about art. Oh, various esthetic notions are mulled (and fought) over in the course of the play. And the central painting becomes something of a fourth character. But what it’s really about is the nature of friendship, its strength and its fragility, and the underground streams of meaning, affection and ego that sustain it. It is a riveting evening, beautifully set, lighted and directed. The actors, all veterans of the Boston theater scene, are simply superb.

Serge, a prosperous plastic surgeon with a developing interest in modern art, has just purchased a painting by the artist of the moment from a prestigious gallery. The canvas, roughly three feet by four feet, is all white. Serge displays his new acquisition with eagerness and pride to his old friend Marc, practically dancing on his toes as he waits for Marc’s appreciation and envy. Marc has a veritable intellectual fit and seems unduly angry, concerned about Serge’s welfare and perhaps his sanity. He shares his concern with their mutual friend, the easy-going and sweet-natured Yvan, who quickly becomes the monkey-in-the-middle between the two battling alpha-males.

We can’t help but sympathize with both Marc and Serge.  Serge's delight in the painting -- and in his ownership of it -- comes across beautifully, making Marc's cutting disapproval tough to watch.  At the same time, we gradually learn that Marc's concern and outrage has little to do with the painting itself, and everything to do with what the painting symbolizes about the new direction of Serge's life.  Marc finally reveals how upset he is to be losing his oldest friend to this new world of "deconstructionist" art (which Marc detests). The argument becomes more and more heated with Serge and Marc saying unforgivable things to and about each other (think: the older couple in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but with two men fighting about a friendship, not a marriage -- although it feels quite marital by the end). Poor Yvan, caught in the middle, tries to mediate and revive the bonhomie, only succeeding in diverting venom to himself. Tension builds to a peak moment which is shocking, but oddly sweet.

Robert Pemberton as Marc, Robert Walsh as Serge, and Doug Lockwood as Yvan disappear completely into the characters they portray. The play bristles with ideas and words, but several of the best and funniest moments of the evening came in silence -- or, rather, in the space between lines.

The director constantly added subtle touches to the play, adding a depth that perhaps it doesn’t inherently possess. Yasmina Reza is clearly the playwright of the moment with her Gods of Carnage playing elsewhere in town and Carnage, the Polanski movie based on that play, showing in local theaters. She certainly has a way with sharp, sophisticated dialog and gives it the sense of excitement and danger that keep the audience on edge, as if watching a swordfight instead of an esthetic disagreement among three middle-aged and rather pretentious men. But then, as we said before, that’s not really what it’s all about.

The Price We Pay for Art

by Frank Furnari, New Rep Reviewer

'ART' explores the relationship between three longtime friends and how the dynamics of their relationship change when one of them acquires an interesting piece of art. 'ART' won the Tony Award for best play in 1998; the show later went on tour and played Boston in 2000. Twelve years later, it is back in the area in New Rep’s new production and except for the references to French francs, the play still feels new.

‘ART’ opens with Serge (Robert Walsh) alone on stage admiring his new painting by Antrios (the artist must be famous when he’s known by just one name, right?), which he bought for 200,000 francs. The painting is an unframed canvas with a white background and white lines on it. The painting is “plain, at the same time magnetic” and “artificial light doesn’t do it justice.” Serge admires the painting from every angle and is giddy at his recent acquisition. Marc (Robert Pemberton) arrives and is asked his opinion of the painting; Marc does not take kindly to his friend's recent purchase and views it akin to a personal insult. Later, Yvan (Doug Lockwood) visits, Serge gets a much more positive reaction. When the three men get together, we see each man's true emotions come out and learn what they really think of each other. 

The play asks questions about what constitutes art and its value. Art is also used to represent each character, we get to see three very different pieces of artwork, and each has its own significance. How much value do we place on the painter’s fame and name recognition? The artwork is also a vehicle to questions about the three men and their relationships. Through harsh words and humor we learn more about each man's situation. 

'ART' is also a good counterpoint to “God of Carnage” – Reza’s other Tony Award-winning play running in town, and as the basis of the new movie “Carnage.” While there are similarities between them and both are great works, ‘ART’ draws you in more, the characters feel more relate-able, and it does not rely as much on the physical, almost slapstick comedy. 

Director Antonio Ocampo-Guzman assembles a great cast with chemistry – it really appears that they have been friends for fifteen years. The actors also do a good job at drawing in the audience. One could see this on opening night where during one scene audible gasps came from the audience in response to one of the character's actions. It's little things like this that help make live theater fun.

"Art" Artfully Performed at New Rep

Victoria Petrosino, New Rep Reviewer

New Rep’s production of Yasmina Reza’s 'ART' is a comedic look at the friendship between three very different men and their reaction to a newly acquired piece of art. In the production, Serge (Robert Walsh) purchases a painting for a large sum of money. The frame-less, modernist piece consists of a white canvas with stripes of white. Serge’s friend Yvan (Doug Lockwood) cautiously describes the work as “plain,” while Serge amends the description to “plain, but MAGNETIC.” Their mutual friend Marc (Robert Pemberton) is less diplomatic.

On the surface, the production prods the question: What determines the value of art?  Serge loves his new painting. He stands in his living room examining the piece from every angle with smile lines creasing his face. He emanates satisfaction with his new Antrios, and for the eternally tolerant Yvan, that is enough. Marc, on the other hand, instantly dismisses the painting. This spurs an argument over the value of art: Can a person judge a painting without a formal understanding of contemporary artwork?  What makes a single painting worth $200,000?  

The argument cuts deeply into their fifteen-year friendship, allowing each actor the opportunity for bitingly sarcastic commentaries about the others’ actions. Like the subtleties of white lines on a slightly different white background, the friends’ attacks on each others' characters predominately target subtle flaws, from the others' tone of voice to his choice of restaurant. Marc laughs too “sardonically” for Serge. Serge says “the artist” too pretentiously for Marc.Yvan agrees with both to the point of self-contradiction. The actors are endlessly comedic in their truthful portrayals of these characters.  

Walsh, in particular, is masterful in his relentless needling. He flaunts this cold, easy power, targeting Marc’s wife, whose habit of waving away cigarette smoke is particularly irksome. Pemberton digs his nails into the bar, gritting his teeth and waiting, while Walsh sits easily on the couch, instigating and mocking.  The two spar with clever dialogue amid quickly escalating stakes, and the expressive Walsh is captivating to watch. When the argument finally reaches its climatic end, Marc returns the favor with one final jab, and the scene closes as Walsh silently fumes.

Lockwood’s role is more self-mocking. He delivers a hilarious monologue (seemingly all in one breath) about his “catastrophe” over wedding invitations. He plays the victim well, and his honesty about both himself and his friends is refreshing (though infuriating to Marc and Serge).

Scenic designer Justin Townsend uses paintings to differentiate the friends’ apartments, and it is interesting to see the object that threatens to disintegrate their friendship used in a way to reference the setting. It draws attention to how important this one object has become in the friends’ lives and how differently these friends live.

The humor of the play is critical and sarcastic. The characters are quick to gang up on the third, and turn on each other almost impossibly fast.  The result is tense, hilarious, and captivating.

Old habits die hard

Old habits die hard

By Emily Kaye Lazzaro

I started this project because I was bored.  The last two plays I wrote were about people being people, with human problems, like their families are falling apart, or their friendships can’t last, or they don’t know how to treat each other well.  And I decided that was boring!  So I started my new play, The Circus.  It’s about an elephant and a tiger and their trainers who run a very small mom-and-pop type circus.  The circus has money problems but they have a great opportunity coming up: an audition for a big circus that might hire them all and save them from bankruptcy.  But the elephant has reservations about the possibility of great cruelty to animals at the big circus, and she realizes that she has real power in their small circus, to be treated well, to have a say in her own life.  So the elephant decides to stand up for herself.  That’s as far as I’ve gotten.  

The play is about captivity and capitalism, mainly.  I wanted to write a play that could explore the notion that we are all trapped by our society, by our obligations, by our finances, and ultimately, by our mortality.  So that seems like a real departure from family drama, right?  

Funnily enough, not really.  Because try as I might to break free of my style of writing, the process seems to remain largely the same.  I write from beginning to end, chronologically.  The elephant and the tiger, though they are animals, are really people.  People I know, people in my own family, myself.  And the small circus I’ve created is really nothing more than a little family.  They care about each other and they hate each other, equally.  And maybe I’m discovering that that is what every play, every story, is about: the human struggle for happiness and understanding.  We hate how much we need each other, but we need each other all the same.

And In This Corner.....'ART'

by Jack Craib, New Rep Reviewer

'ART', New Rep’s latest production, is one of the most frequently performed contemporary works throughout the theatrical world, and it’s easy to see why. Cynics might say that this is because it requires only three actors and a unit set that with minor changes can easily represent three different apartments, but they would be only partly correct. Because the playwright, Yasmina Reza, is also an actress, she has the uncommon knack of being able to create dialogue that seems natural and true to life. Reza, in this work, the 1998 Tony winner as best play (in, it must be said, a very uncompetitive season), shows herself to be an actor’s writer. This comedy of ill manners, not unlike her more recent play, “God of Carnage,” features a small set of characters whose interactions, if a bit exaggerated, often mirror incidents familiar in our everyday lives. Reza herself has stated that she views both plays as tragedies as much as comedies.Unlike “Carnage,” however, this far superior work is not a series of shouting matches, but necessitates more nuanced performances, more intricate and modulated Pinteresque pacing, and more precision in direction.

Fortunately, New Rep has assembled a team that is keenly aware of these expectations. As Serge, a dermatologist whose artistic pretensions may be only skin deep, Robert Walsh is painfully funny as he solicits validation for his recent purchase of a new painting by an artist currently in vogue. The four foot by five feet white monochrome (or is it?) strikes his friend Marc, expertly played by Robert Pemberton, as something of a cruel joke, evoking a truthful if blunt reaction that injures Serge’s vulnerable defenses. The foil for both these verbal combatants is their mutual friend Yvan, hysterically portrayed by Doug Lockwood, as eager to be agreeable as to be accepted. His sheepdog hyperventilated preoccupation with the familial tensions unleashed by the politics and protocols of wedding invitations is alone worth the price of admission. (One can’t help wondering, though, how this bundle of neuroses was ever befriended by these two pseudo sophisticates). Keeping these three characters in orbit is the direction by Antonio Ocampo-Guzman, who knows how to utilize silence and subtlety. Scenic and Lighting Designer Justin Townsend provides a venue that aptly suggests a boxing ring, and Sound Designer David Remedios contributes musical interludes that ably assist several scene transitions.

Ocampo-Guzman has written that although we inherit the family members we have, we get to choose our friends, and the best of them are those who tell us the truth. It may hurt, especially when it involves the very subjective and emotional reactions to creative expression. This brief tale of revolving loyalties and alternating alliances exposes both Reza’s greatest strength and her most glaring weakness as a writer. With pithy wit and economy of words, often with what is withheld as much as with what is said, she clearly can cut straight to the jugular. Her characters, however, border on the stereotypical, perilously close to the world of sitcom. That said, this is still quite an enjoyable ride. Like the controversial piece of art around which the play revolves, 'ART' may be a slight piece of monochromatic minimalism, but its beauty surely lies in the eyes of this beholder.