review of *Art* at Interplayers

through March 27

“Art” isn’t about art at all. It’s about friendship: How we try to domineer our friends and mold them according to our own values.
It’s a thoughtful play, but “Art” is also a comedy — because the relationship decisions that playwright Yasmina Reza’s three characters make are all so laughably bad.
Suppose, for example, that your best friend did something that you considered wrong-minded, wasteful, pretentious and embarrassing. Would you tell him?
Would you tell him kindly, and with an eye to preserving your friendship? Or would you tell him unkindly, getting all principled and cold with him?

In director Reed McColm’s production of Yasmina Reza’s play (through March 27), Interplayers has bounced back with one of the current season’s best productions.

As Marc — who scoffs at the purchase by his friend Serge (Roger Welch) of an all-white painting — Jack Bannon offers the evening’s most subtle performance. When mocking the idea that a non-painting can have emotional “resonance,” Bannon clutches two hands to his chest and looks skyward, ever the martyr. When Serge praises an ancient writer for being “incredibly modern,” Bannon repeats the phrase with withering sarcasm. When Serge rebels against Marc’s disdain, Bannon responds with a resigned look, his hands folded, condescendingly calm.

Bannon's Marc seems to assume that his friends will share his taste in art — if they’re his friends, and if it’s really art.

Unfortunately, Bannon’s energy level seemed low at a preview-night performance; his voice, occasionally feeble. All three cast members were guilty of line-wobbles, noticeable lapses, places where the 90-minute, intermissionless pace needed to quicken. Over the course of the run, however, they’ll probably resolve such problems.

As Serge — purchaser of the all-white canvas — Roger Welch sweeps his arm across his prized possession. “It’s plain,” he says, investing the painting with more dignity than it deserves. It has only a few swipes of indiscernible color — enough to test whether we’ll restrain our ego (that’s a nice painting, Serge) or exert it (you’re an idiot, Serge).
Welch is perhaps at his best during the sequences when Serge and Marc gang up on their mutual friend Yvan (Patrick Treadway), who’s caught in the middle. Lounging on a sofa, with drink in hand, Welch tosses off insults with a sour expression, walking the fine line between blunt honesty and supercilious disdain.

Treadway’s finest moment comes in a mid-play rant, a miniature soap opera of a monologue in which Yvan whines about preparations for his upcoming wedding. Watch how Treadway avoids most look-how-frantic-I-am choices, instead choosing to stay seated on the couch, bouncing up only on occasion.

Poor spineless Yvan: caught between two massive egos, his pleas for the civility and consideration of genuine friendship go unheard. McColm emphasizes the dissolving friendships by disengaging his three actors in separate pools of light; for the various two-on-one face-offs, he aligns twosomes shoulder to shoulder while isolating the third actor.

Damon Abdallah's set successfully creates elegant ambience in the Upscale Spartan style.

Bannon invests the play’s final speech with a sobering reflection: We fill our lives with egotism. And then our lives disappear.
Will our legacies involve how many people loved us, or how well we upheld our principles? “Art” is the kind of play that inspires post-performance discussion — because you and your companions might have differing views about it.
At which point you may be compelled to choose: my friendships or my opinions?

“Art” sticks an all-white painting in our faces through March 27 on Wednesdays-Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays at 8 pm, and Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm at Interplayers, 174 S. Howard St. Tickets: $15-$21; $12-$19, seniors; $10, student rush. Visit interplayers.com or call 455-PLAY.

photos: *Art* at Interplayers

March 11-27 at Interplayers
by Yasmina Reza
directed by Reed McColm
starring Jack Bannon as Marc, Patrick Treadway as Yvan and Roger Welch as Serge

premiered in Paris in 1994, in London in 1996, and in New York in 1998
Won the Tony for Best Play in '98
has been translated into 30 languages
last produced at Interplayers nine years ago this month, in March 2001 -- directed by Joan Welch and with a set by Jason Laws; starring Michael Weaver as Serge, Peter Murray as Marc, and Steven L. Barron as Yvan

Serge buys a white painting (with a few white lines on it) for 200,000 francs. He's quite proud of it.
His best friend Marc, nonplussed, can't quite believe that his friend has done such a stupid thing.
Their insecure friend Yvan, who has family and upcoming-wedding problems of his own, gets caught in the crossfire.
What's more important — friendship, or principles of aesthetics?
Would a real friend insist that you should like (and dislike) everything he likes (and dislikes)?

from a 3/8/01 review of the Interplayers production by some guy named Bowen:
Playwright Yasmina Reza welcomes you to a dramatic world where men spout beliefs they don't really feel in order to achieve a supremacy they don't really want.
After all, when a man loathes what his friend loves -- that all-white painting again -- what is he to do? Ultimately, "Art" suggests that sometimes we should just accept our friends' opinions, even if -- especially if -- those beliefs violate our own private criteria for good taste.
.... Like Serge and Marc in the play, we project onto our friends the traits we insist they should have. These are the traits, we like to think, that we ourselves have placed there.
[ a mostly positive review, with some criticisms of each of the actors and of the directing ]

Love Letters, Angels and Art

Ellen Travolta and Jack Bannon will appear in an Interplayers fundraiser, in three performances of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters, on Friday-Saturday, Jan. 29-30. Tickets: $25.

Honky Tonk Highway has been replaced by Honky Tonk Angels, with revised performance dates of Feb. 4-20.

Casting for the March 10-27 production of Yasmina Reza's Art has been announced: Jack Bannon, Patrick Treadway and Roger Welch.

Tony-watching

An L.A. Times post suggests that while about 3.6 percent of all Americans watched at least part of Game 2 of the NBA Finals (Lakers vs. Magic), about 2.4 percent watched part of the Tony Awards.
Put that way, theater doesn't seem quite so marginal. Ratings were up; the quality and size of the Broadway season were up.
Bobo's take: The Shrek number was embarrassing and awful. I was intrigued by *Next to Normal.* Geoffrey Rush was eloquent and funny.
And I read *God of Carnage* last night -- single set, 2 M & 2 W; this script will get performed a lot, much like *Art.* Amazing how Reza evokes the beast-like, savage selfishness that crouches inside the id, ready to spring, while at the same time writing laugh-out-loud passages.

If you can't see 'em, read 'em

Dwight Garner's article in the New York Times describes the pleasures of reading the Tony Best Play-nominated scripts if you live in, say, a backwater like Spokane and can't travel to what Variety still refers to as the Rialto to see the plays in performance.

Bobo is pleased to say that he's done a lot better than Garner in reading and/or seeing the Tony-winning scripts of the past five years. Bobo's also midway through reading reasons to be pretty and has God of Carnage about to arrive in his mailbox. (The LaBute just seems like more of the same; a local playwright once took classes with LaBute and reports him to be, well, not nice; given his obsession with others' physical appearance and his own ... well, I can believe the "not nice" report and reasons strikes me, so far, as just more of the same from LaBute.