Neil Patrick Harris as seen in “Art.”
Photo by Matthew Murphy
On paper, the new Broadway revival of Yasmina Reza’s “Art” sounds like a winner: three Tony Award winners — Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and James Corden — trading barbs in a sleek comedy about male friendship and the value of modern art. The result is hardly terrible, but it is slight. The laughs are modest, the pacing drags, and the play never builds beyond its simple conceit.
Written in French in 1994 and translated by Christopher Hampton, “Art” became an unlikely international phenomenon, running for years in London and enjoying a hit Broadway run in the late 1990s with a constantly rotating cast of celebrities. A decade later, Reza repeated her success with “God of Carnage.” I vividly remember seeing “Art” in 1999 as a teenager with a replacement cast led by George Segal and Wayne Knight. At the time, it felt sharp and unexpectedly funny. Watching it again now, the play comes across as lightweight and underwhelming.
The setup is simple. Serge (Harris) spends a fortune on a modernist painting — essentially an all-white canvas — which his longtime friend Marc (Cannavale) dismisses as worthless. Their hapless friend Yvan (Corden), caught up in wedding-planning chaos, is dragged into the conflict. What follows is 90 minutes of circular bickering that trudges along, punctuated by a manic monologue from Yvan and a final dramatic gesture involving the canvas itself.
Director Scott Ellis, a longtime Roundabout Theatre Company mainstay, is best known for his many revivals of both plays and musicals, which tend to be straightforward in execution. That approach is evident here. There’s nothing flashy or conceptual in his staging. The clarity is admirable, but it also exposes the limitations of the text. “Art” is essentially a boulevard comedy, witty in moments but thin overall. Compared to the probing, ambitious, and unapologetically political plays that dominate contemporary American theater, “Art” feels inconsequential, more clever dinner party banter than drama of substance.
The three stars do their best to inject life. Harris makes Serge smooth and boyish, Cannavale adds bite and suspicion (sporting a white streak in his hair and a rasp in his voice), and Corden, using his English accent, supplies broad physical comedy. They have solid chemistry and build to bursts of energy, but even their combined efforts cannot disguise how repetitive the play feels. All three are Tony Award–winning actors who have given far greater performances elsewhere, and one cannot help wishing to see them in richer material: Cannavale in a new Stephen Adly Guirgis drama, Harris in “Barnum,” or Corden in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
Visually, the production is deliberately spare: a neutral backdrop that frames the infamous white painting. One wonders why the producers did not display a replica in the lobby, letting audiences debate its merit themselves.
Some may argue the play still resonates, likening Marc’s inability to fathom Serge’s taste in modern art to friendships strained by politics on social media. The analogy exists, but the play is too slight to carry it. The humor also feels dated, out of step with contemporary Broadway audiences who expect more depth and urgency. “Art” toys with questions of loyalty, taste, and compromise, but never pushes further. Despite three engaging performances, the show drags until its final minutes. In the end, this revival is less a masterpiece than a blank canvas.
Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., artonbroadway.com.
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