ART: A Debate Over Devaluation — Review

I never thought I’d see Yasmina Reza’s 1994 play, Art, staged. Its central comedic conceit of three friends arguing over one’s $300,000 purchase of a plain white canvas always felt like a relic of that era’s New Yorker style of humor; a Graydon Carter worldliness imposed onto that Seinfeld bit about Grape-Nuts. But as with her other comedy, God of Carnage, about parents fighting over whose kid hit the other, it’s less an exploration of the thing than a clever unspooling of repercussions.

The play, as translated from its original French by Christopher Hampton, is still good. But sitting through Scott Ellis’ intermittently enjoyable revival at the Music Box, it was clear it needs perfect casting and a razor-sharp directorial vision to justify itself. This first Broadway revival promises luxury and stars; its black-and-white poster has Bobby Cannavale, James Corden and Neil Patrick Harris suited-up and laughing expensively, politely. That frictionless sheen also glazes over their onstage chemistry, however game each of them seem to be.

Cannavale fares best as Marc, who can’t believe his longtime friend would throw money away on something so frivolous. He opens the show with a direct audience address, given the upper hand by virtue of … well, isn’t every reference to the white canvas played for laughs? But his appealing earthiness does not match the self-absorbed center of gravity we’re told he thinks he is.

Serge (Harris) levels that accusation against him, having bought the painting as the latest move in his lofty desire to be a man of his time. As always, Harris is an amiable presence, but does not seem like the type to buy such a painting, or even less to take offense to reactions. He is also not entirely at home in the cadences which the English Hampton brings to a translation of what is an incredibly French scenario. (More on time and place later.)

As the softie caught in the middle, Corden, of course, clears that bar. But he begins the play crawling on all fours, pushing yet again for charm or attention, and his performance never gets off its knees from there.

There’s little point in describing the plot, given Reza is more interested in how her characters react to each other in sequence. Despite having no real malice toward each other, she locates a manner of complicitious conniving in how they interact, with each friend telling the other (mostly) what they want to hear, before its lengthy final movement throws them all together.

Art, then, is about appraising, appeasing and appealing.

Reza doesn’t peek too much into these men’s souls: The play does not care about who is right, or whether where they’re coming from is legit, rather how they react and bounce off each other, and around the provocative question of, What do we do when a friend has changed? But Ellis does not direct the men to play into the verbal volleying at the center of the work, and allows tension to dissipate with the Apple commercial dings and swooshes (by Kid Harpoon) that score each scene transition. David Rockwell’s vaguely Parisian apartment set, while handsome, is too characterless for such supposed aesthetes.

Ah, yes. The play is still set in Paris, a revelation that might raise an eye when, late in the play, Harris’ character mentions a casual recent visit to the Centre Pompidou. The line does fit, though, if only in the play itself. There is a continental air to its proceedings which a litany of English-speaking stars were surely able to carry into the play’s original Anglo stagings; men of letters, like Albert Finney, Victor Garber and Alfred Molina, who feel most appropriate queening out over money or art or the writings of Seneca.

There is just no believing that such a situation could happen in as culturally impoverished and illiterate a place as the United States in 2025, where this production is firmly based in spirit. Somewhat aptly, its men are out to win the audience as distinct individuals, intricate relations be damned. You can’t really fault them: That’s the state of the art here.

Art is in performance through December 21, 2025 at the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.