If a play wins America's Tony Award, England's Olivier Award and France's Moliere Prize, it must be pretty special, right? Somehow it must combine that special Stateside energy with British wit and French analytical rigor; and still it must speak to a part of our humanity so deep as to render national boundaries irrelevant. With a name like Art — well, clearly this play's gonna have something important to say about works of the imagination, about their controversial place in today's high-tech, high-stress society. From the Hudson to the Seine by way of the Thames, they're calling this play a champ. And the whole world can't be wrong. Right?
Well, um (clearing throat) … actually. …
Art, which three years after winning the Tony has finally made it to the west coast of Florida, is a pleasant, even charming intellectual sitcom that doesn't deserve any country's Best Play award, not in this drama-rich decade. It's a well-constructed, better-than-average one-act with a nice sense of humor, the appearance of erudition and a rather philistine approach to the world of modern art that you wouldn't be surprised to discover on, say, Frasier, or maybe Friends.
Yes, the 90 minutes of Yasmina Reza's play at Sarasota's Asolo Theatre provoke a few good chuckles and even one or two (tentative) brain waves. But if you go to this production expecting a major experience a la Wit or Angels in America or even Master Class, forget it. This is one case where the hype and the reality aren't even in the same hemisphere.
The story of Art is the story of three friends — Marc, Serge and Yvan — and how they react when Serge purchases, for 200,000 francs, an all-white painting by an artist named Antrios. They react skeptically. They react politely. Marc says the painting is "shit." Yvan says that if it makes Serge happy, then it's all right. The next time the three men are together, Yvan insists that he's moved by the painting's "colors," and Marc calls him "a little arse-licker … obsequious, dazzled by money, dazzled by what he believes to be culture."
The debate continues with occasional mentions of an essay by Seneca, of the poet Paul Valery and of "deconstruction." There's a tussle and then a somewhat surprising climax — the only surprise in the play — and after a brief epilogue, the thing's over. And that's it. The entirety of the experience.
Well, surely that's not all, you say. Surely in the course of these clever and admittedly funny discussions, something deep has been said about friendship, or modern painting, or, at the very least, the arguable status of minimalist art. Surely there's more to the play.
Nope. Not even during the intellectual namedropping segments (and it is namedropping when you merely mention Seneca or Valery without ever going any deeper), not even then do we truly learn anything new or important. This is conversation on a highly literate level, yes, but that's all it is: literate conversation.
And maybe it's something worse. Because again and again, Reza suggests that the all-white painting is a fraud, the Emperor's New Clothes that everyone but Serge can easily see through. And this is a philistine notion, as an open-minded knowledge of the history of modern painting will bear out. Consider the 1918 work White on White by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich: Far from being a deception, it's a spiritually motivated attempt to bring painting away from pictorial reality and into a realm of what art critic Robert Hughes calls "pure thought."
Contrary to Reza's implication, abstraction in art — even to the point of monochrome — has usually been the work of honest truth-seekers, not snake oil salesmen with an eye on the gullible public. It would be nice if Reza at least entertained this possibility somewhere in her play.
On the other hand, the acting in the Asolo production is uncomplicatedly excellent. Best of all is David Breitbarth, who as Yvan is a thin-skinned neurotic, given to sudden fits of tears as he tries desperately to arbitrate between his antagonized friends. Bradford Wallace and Douglas Jones are also superb: Wallace's Marc is a smugly self-satisfied prima donna, disturbed to finds himself in a competition with a painting, and Jones' Serge is a connoisseur on the way up, proud to own the white painting and happily conscious of the status he believes its purchase confers on him.
Steven Rubin's ultramodern apartment set is just right for the subject, and Vicki S. Holden's costumes, three similar dark suits, lend an appropriately European look to the actors. You really couldn't ask for a better production of the play.
But you might sensibly ask for a better, deeper, more searching play.
But now consider this possibility: let's say Art hadn't won all those awards in Europe and America; let's say it came to the stage with little or no backstory. How might it appear? Well, to be honest, I think I might shamelessly recommend it as an interesting comedy, a harmless pastime for those with 90 minutes to pass. In these circumstances, without all the hype, Art wouldn't disappoint; it would please. And critics like me wouldn't feel obligated to remark that it doesn't come anywhere near living up to its reputation.
Maybe that's the right attitude.
Shelve your expectations. And then you just might like Art.
Shear Here. Stageworks is now preparing for a stint at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. The play that Anna Brennen's theater is bringing to downtown Tampa is Claudia Shear's one-woman show Blown Sideways Through Life, an autobiographical work about the playwright's 64 temp jobs — including pastry chef, nude model, receptionist for a whorehouse, Wall Street proofreader and Italian translator. Starring will be Fort Lauderdale Equity actress Carol Provonscha.
Brennen says she decided to do the play because "basically it hits all our mission marks. It's a new play. It's about someone who's normally a misfit in society, somebody who's fat. It's about … finding work, keeping work and being fired. … It's cathartic because she has to come to terms with herself, to accept herself and move on. … Stageworks is always raising social issues around intolerance and insensitivity, and our society is very intolerant and insensitive to fat women. And it's funny."
Blown Sideways Through Life will run at the Shimberg Playhouse of TBPAC from July 6-23. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays. Tickets cost $10-$15.50. Call 813-229-STAR.
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2001.