'Art' vague in deconstructing male bonding

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'Art' Presented by The Actors' Group 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, through March 2 Yellow Brick Studio $10; 591-7999

Maybe it's there, but the playwright, or the director, or the actors, didn't show it to me. It's probably my fault for not knowing what to look for, or I'm too obtuse to know it if I saw it.

It's like — like trying to find art in a painting done completely in white.

"Art," by French playwright Yasmina Reza and translated by Christopher Hampton played well on Broadway and abroad, and won several awards. But the thought continues to nag that it's an extremely lightweight piece that succeeds only when excellent performances give it surface laughter and deeper insight.

It does not have a difficult premise.

One of three friends buys an extremely expensive piece of modern art. It's a white painting with a hint of texture and — maybe in the right light — diagonal shades of gray. The second friend pronounces it to be trash. The third equivocates.

While the dialogue discusses art, the men work out the complications of their friendship, dissecting layers beneath layers like a trio of over-schooled, indulgent lovers of self-analysis. Men aren't supposed to be this complicated. Is it because they're French? Or did the female playwright project her own gender on her helpless creations?

Dave Donnelly directs the 90-minute one-act for The Actors' Group, and the close quarters at the Yellow Brick Studio demand intimacy. But although the cast works hard, these are characters we'd like to keep at a safe distance.

Dave Farmer plays Serge, a monastic art hound who delights in announcing the painting's price and how he could sell it immediately for $20,000 more. Serge is much too wrapped up in himself to be interesting to anyone else — and when he offers his guest a snack of bottled water and cashew nuts instead of beer and chips, he's judged not worth taking seriously.

Mark Stitham plays Mark, who is immediately more likeable when he labels the painting with a four-letter vulgarity. But the root of the friends' supposed friendship doesn't bear analysis, because it simply doesn't exist. And the superficial rehash of who laughed first and did he laugh for the right reason is not as funny as it should have been.

Russell Motter plays Yvan the peacemaker, who holds Serge and Mark together by providing a soft middle ground for them to poke at.

Mark is half-heartedly headed for marriage and is newly given to bursting into tears. His pals brutally console him: "You have every reason to cry: You're losing your best friends and you're marrying a gorgon."

That dialogue might play as high gay camp, but the production carefully skirts any hint at homosexual undertones. The play's best moments happen during a prolonged silent scene as the men suck on olives and nurse their wounded psyches.

The climax is a friendship test that seems almost real, but even that is undercut with an admission that the stakes were rigged.

"Art" gives a workout to the thesis that men are vulnerable and complex in their friendships, but — like a guy with too much weight on a bench press — it's just trying too hard.