Back in the 1990s, you couldn’t get away from “Art.” It spread like kudzu. And it moved faster than the lips of a greedy auctioneer at Sotheby’s.
Long runs of Yasmina Reza’s slick, savvy, star-friendly satire-Francais of upper-middle-class mores became ubiquitous, in New York, London. Chicago. I must have seen it a dozen times. Theaters gorged on a minimalist three-character soupçon that needed only one set, if any at all, and lasted only 90 minutes, leaving time for both dinner and show. It made audiences feel like consumers of sophisticated aesthetic inquiry without really challenging their tired brains.
Not long ago, people were saying plays like “Art” were everything that was wrong with Broadway, although usually without really asking audiences. Now “Art,” as translated by Christopher Hampton, is back on Broadway with Scott Ellis directing the big box office draws James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale. They play three dudes sitting around discussing a totally blanc painting that just cost one of them a cool $300,000.
As you peer from your perch at the painting sitting in the middle of David Rockwell‘s cleverly defined environment (Rockwell is having some fun at the expense of his interior design clients), there appears to be no there there when it comes to that painting.
So was the man prescient? Duped? Ergo, the main question of the evening, as you sit there wondering what temperature you’ll order your postshow steak frites.
Aside from spoofing the contemporary art world, with its insane valuations based on the throbbing insecurities of people with way too much money, “Art” eventually delves into male friendship and the difficulty men, especially middle-aged ones, have in actually opening themselves up to their friends. You know, as distinct from joshing and sparring and circling each other like wolves gnawing at vulnerabilities. It had to be a woman to write a play about that.
The ace in the hole in Ellis’ revival is Corden, who is just fabulous here. The one-time late-night host doesn’t have the kind of emotional writing that made him famous in the British TV show “Gavin & Stacey,” but he doesn’t let that get in his way.
Corden adds layers of his own, veering from hyperemotionalism to broad comedy to bravura monologuing. Aside from his skills at comic timing with varied pacing, which are formidable, he has figured out how to spin his noggin and actively listen to his fellow performers, or at least make it seem that way. His years as a talk show host surely helped him there, and it really pays off in making the show come alive, drawing out both Cannavale and Harris, who share a more minimalist tack. “Art” really is the James Corden show here.
That said, I enjoyed all three men, actually, partly because Cannavale is the kind of brooding, method-y, Al Pacino-y actor whose presence in this kind of play is so weird and wrong as to be extremely funny. It’s very clever casting. Harris is amusing, too, although I wish he’d found more contrast at the play’s big turning point, when a key decision in favor of friendship has to be made. That requires more vulnerability, and it’s all a bit rushed here. Harris is a great stage actor, of course, but in the end, his guy has to exit from the freeway of cool detachment.
If you saw “Art” back in its heyday, you likely forgot the finer points of the plot. It is forgettable. But there is no credible arguing with this level of audience-pleasing success. This very fun revival at least makes the case that forgettability can be an asset and “Art’ enjoyed over and over again.
