Art
Yasmina Reza
Shotgun Players
The choice that Shotgun Players surely made months ago to open the 2025 season with Art — the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play by French playwright Yasmina Reza and translated to English by Christopher Hampton — proves to be brilliant as we are in the midst of Trump’s first hundred days. As we watch three best friends with a fifteen-year history painfully tear apart their long-linked relationships, we see reflections of our own, current society. Their increasingly hostile insults that begin with comical differences of viewpoints too soon degenerate into all-out attacks based on warped perceptions of opposing beliefs and biases. How can we not be reminded of the scenes we now daily see of neighbors, colleagues, and even family members across this country often seething in anger over concepts held by some as true and by others as demonic? The increasing conflicts of the play’s principals are often triggered by the misinterpretations of words, tones of voice, or even side glances across the room – all too similar to what many of us are currently experiencing in 2025.
A newly acquired piece of art by the urbane Serge is the point of initiation of a conflict that will soon escalate to regions never meant to be explored by him or his two best pals, Marc and Yvan. When Serge proudly brings out the yet-to-be-hung canvas to show visiting Marc, the latter’s reaction is one of stunned disbelief sharpened with an acidic edge of tone when he hears that Serge has spent two hundred thousand euros on a five-by-four canvas that is all white. That it is an Antrios, even “a ‘70s Antrios,” does not keep Marc from spewing out several times the words “this shit” to describe what he thinks of Serge’s treasured purchase.
The third member of this triangle, Yvan, hears of the art purchase first from a near-ranting Marc who begins to use words like “sheer snobbery” and “freak” as he talks to one best friend about his other best friend. Yvan tries to assuage him that although 200K euros is a lot to pay for an all-white painting, what is wrong “if it makes him happy?” With an astounded look of almost disgust, Marc replies, “What sort of philosophy is that, if it makes him happy? … “It’s doing harm to me … I’m disturbed.” Again, the parallels to today quickly become apparent as one begins to hear current echoes of so many angry people who are “disturbed” because of what others hold as true, even if those beliefs or views in no way directly affect them and their daily lives.
Yvan tries to establish himself as the peacemaking go-between, visiting Serge and even getting Serge to laugh with him over the price paid. But bridges burned cannot be built back easily; and a subsequent planned evening of all three to go to dinner ends up becoming ever-shifting eruptions of each pair going after the third member, bringing up long-held but heretofore unspoken resentments and annoyances. Phrases like “a man of his time” or a description like “the way she waves away cigarette smoke” become sudden fuses that set off fireworks and even pushing-match, near-fisticuffs explosions. And all the time, we keep reminding ourselves the hard-hitting drama we are now watching actually began as a light-hearted comedy, one built on something as innocuous as a blank, white canvas.
The three actors embodying these friends who are fast advancing toward sworn enemies are totally fascinating to watch as each makes dramatic switches in demeanor, personality, and overall presence. Transformations sometimes occur in a split second as two who were screaming at each other suddenly are buddy-buddy again, agreeing on how stupid, how out-of-touch, or just how overall wrong about everything the third is. The two-against-one shifts occur often with just the mention of some random word, just a tone of voice, or even just a look.
Benoît Monin’s Serge immediately projects an air of superiority, speaking with an unidentifiable ‘continental’ accent and holding his cigarette or drink in a manner that says, “I know more than you.” His looks of shock at Marc’s reactions are clearly exaggerated for show, with the aim probably of pushing Marc even more over the edge. When accused of being “jumpy,” he denies with indignation while rushing over almost to inhale a bowl of nuts.
For his part, David Sinaiko’s Marc is often a walking bomb ready to explode. He is constantly in an excitable, irritated state while also able to exude sheer nastiness and contempt when mocking Serge’s choice of words to describe his painting — words like “masterpiece” and “incredibly modern” or even “artist.” So wound up is Marc that at time it seems that his eyes will literally pop out of his head or that he might pass out laughing so hysterically and uncontrollably when looking at or mentioning Serge’s painting. His hands alone have their own script to convey as they are in perpetual motion with fingers moving in every direction to add punctuation to the hands’ messages.
It is especially Woody Harper that leaves lasting impressions as the rather timid Yvan, usually the quieter of the three. Yvan’s life is in disarray — new job he does not like, upcoming marriage to a dominating fiancé, mother and new in-law issues, etc. — and he just looks as if he feels totally inferior in every respect to his two friends. When he arrives at Serge’s at one point to describe a crisis in the wedding planning, the normally sedate Yvan becomes a manic mess, mimicking hilariously his own mother while pounding fists into his head. As his friends continue to increase their attacks on each other and then to turn their attention to advise against his upcoming nuptials, Yvan hangs onto the nearest wall, looking as if he might vomit at any moment, while increasingly slumping evermore his shoulders to the point he actually loses inches in his overall height.
Emile Whelan’s directorial choices actually become a fourth character in this electrically exciting Shotgun production. Before the first words are spoken, the three actors enter down the aisles in t-shirts, soon singing with hard-rock moves into the stage’s still-lit ‘ghost light’ “Killing Against the Rage” by Brass Against. Their ensuing street-like brawl becomes a preview of the conflicts to come.
Throughout the play as each of the three have moments of internal conversations/thoughts, the Director teams with Sound Designer Gabriel Rodriguez to have those comments echo from speakers behind us as audience, at one point occurring at the same time for all three to underline the point that no one is or has been really listening to the other two. Bear Graham humorously inserts as choreographer a line dance that underscores the ridiculous extent these three have taken their back-and-forth bantering. Even Randy Wong-Westerbrooke’s stunning set design gets into the action as the Director humorously reminds us time and again that things are falling apart piece by piece in these relationships. Scotch tape becomes one of the evening’s biggest ongoing jokes.
Even with brilliant acting and directorial choices, the waves of disputes, arguments, insults, and break-downs after a while become a bit exhausting. But in the end, this Shotgun Players production is definitely funny, disturbing, and enlightening and in many ways reflective twenty years after its premiere of what is happening daily all around us.
Rating: 4.5 E
Art continues through April 12, 2025 (an extended run) in a ninety-five-minute (no intermission) production at Shotgun Players, 1901 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, CA. Tickets are available online at https://shotgunplayers.org; by phone at (510) 841-6500, ext. 303; or by email at boxoffice@shotgunplayers.org.
Photo Credits: David Boyll
