Image Credit: Brett Boardman
How is it possible that a 90-minute, one act play can simultaneously have everything and nothing happening throughout each turning conversation and still provide compelling moments of relationship dissections with a healthy dose of comedic relief?
ART by French playwright Yazmina Reza follows the story of three best friends Marc (Richard Roxburgh), Serge (Damon Herriman) and Ivan (Toby Scmitz), and the comical, sometimes hysterical, reactions that ensue when Serge (Herriman) buys a 160,000 Euro painting on a “five by four, white background canvas, with horizontal white stripes’ as Marc (Roxburgh) describes it.
What starts off as a seemingly basic concept that surely couldn’t draw audience attention for a full 90 minutes, reveals something much deeper about friendships formed, and broken, when money is involved. After all, money is the root of all evil, right?
The play is exquisitely cast, with easy banter between each of the actors on stage. The friendships are perfectly believable and eerily reflective of thoughts, feelings and conversations I’m sure we can all attest to having at one point or another in our lives.
Entering QPAC’s Playhouse theatre, the audience was met with a luminous rectangle propelled from the ceiling at centre stage, representing the expensive travesty we’re soon to be introduced to. The stage itself presents a simple set design, which in of itself is a blank canvas, with moving furniture between scenes to represent the three different homes of the friends.
Richard Roxburgh (Rake, The Correspondent, Elvis), who plays Marc, the most astonished at Serge’s extravagant purchase, gives a performance with equal parts vigour and feeling, displaying delightful comedic moments of frustration when his friends don’t appreciate the absurdity of the situation… but is it really so absurd?
The beauty of these three characters is their relatable nature, in that we’ve all played the role of the offended, the proud, or the “as long as they’re happy” friend, a line which Ivan (Schmitz) utters repeatedly throughout the beginning of the play.
Damon Herriman (Better Man, Mr InBetween, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) plays Serge with the perfect combination of charm, wit and bravado, as the ‘too good for anyone’ friend now considering himself a cut above the rest with his newfound passion for art collecting. Serge’s insistence that his friends read Seneca because ‘it’s a masterpiece’, is delivered in such a way that it begs the question, is this how the rest of the world sees us theatre fanatics when discussing the arts? How very meta!
What we learn as the story unfolds, is that Marc’s reaction to Serge’s expensive purchase isn’t perhaps about the painting after all, but something much deeper.
An impressive feat for this play is its ability to convey a genuine vulnerability in male relationships, where three men can discuss how they feel about their friendship with one another openly, honestly and without guard. It’s a rarity to see this form of relationship dynamic portrayed in such a compelling way on stage, making for a truly refreshing theatre experience – a credit to the writing, direction and cast who portrayed it.
Toby Schmitz (Boy Swallows Universe, Gaslight, Grief is the Thing with Feathers) plays the seemingly carefree Ivan, who serves as the punching bag of the trio in the final showdown. Whilst dealing with the pressures of wedding planning, Ivan is tossed into the growing tension between Serge and Marc. Schmitz gives an endearing performance, at one point strapping the audience in for a hilarious retelling of a phone conversation with his fiancée, mother and soon-to-be mother-in-law, ultimately costing the three friends their planned trip to the cinema.
The final crux of this Picasso of a performance, is the moment in which Serge gives in to the joint mockery of his friends, allowing them to draw on his expensive artwork, or so you would be led to believe…
Perhaps one of the cleverest elements of this play is its layered messaging around relationship dynamics. Upon discussing it with other audience members, it was clear that Reza’s masterpiece comes with a mixed bag of reactions. Some people loved it, some didn’t understand it and some were completely indifferent to it…starting to sound familiar of three characters recently discussed?
Art truly is subjective to those who experience it and is perhaps what makes us not so different from the Serge’s, Marc’s and Ivan’s of the world. This play is brilliant on so many levels and deserves to be experienced by all audiences, no matter their familiarity with the arts scene.
ART goes on to play at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne from 22 April to 17 May, before making its final journey to Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s Theatre from 20 to 24 May.
