James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
ART
By Julia Polinsky
There’s a lot of star power on stage in the revival of Yasmina Reza’s ART, now at the Music Box. Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris star in this revival, and at times, it seems like the audience clearly shows up to enjoy the cast more than the play.
The three stars almost manage not to upstage the play itself as they showcase the snappy repartee of Reza’s sophisticated book, radiating energy all over the place, being quite funny and thoroughly unpleasant at the same time. That’s a neat trick: making the three characters in ART amusing. Because they’re not. They’re “old friends” who, essentially show up in one anothers’ lives to discuss each other. And Serge’s new painting.
Sophisticated, worldly Serge (Harris) has purchased a painting that’s completely white, and spent $300,000 on it, waxing lyrical about the artist, the brushstrokes, the colors implicitly visible... Equally worldly Marc (Cannavale), pulling no punches, tells him it’s shit. Yvan (Corden), the not-quite buffoon/comic–relief/loser buddy plays Serge and Marc against each other, tells them what they want to hear, and before it all comes crashing down, has a long monologue that just displays how much of a doormat he is, to his fiancée, his mother – and his friends. Comedy leavens the show, but the underlying nastiness of these men’s relationships with each other is kind of hard to take.
Bobby Cannavale (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
ART has been spoken of as a show about male friendship. If so: the state of those friendships is dire. In the hour and 40 minutes of Three Men Talking, the power dynamic among them changes again and again, with a vicious undercurrent that explodes near the end — and a barely credible resolution that feels tacked-on.
Critiquing the modern-day art world, and the market for it, and the people who buy contemporary art, is kind of low-hanging fruit, and bashing the self involved arrogance of the self-deceiving collector: well, that’s pretty easy, too. All things being relative. But there’s nothing easy or sleazy in these actors’ performances.
Harris, the most stage-accomplished of the three, is oddly wooden; his Serge doesn’t seem to be truly able to appreciate art, just what it represents: status, wealth, being in an in-group. His stage presence in Linda Cho’s monochromatic but beautifully tailored costumes fades into the darkness he’s dressed in. Cannavale’s one-note meanness may be in the script, but it doesn’t leave much room for the improvement at the end of the show to be credible. And Corden’s role hardly makes sense at all; Yvan is the catalyst for the explosion between Serge and Marc, but Corden is playing Corden. That may be a reliable and safe choice; putting people in Broadway seats to see the stars shine seldom fails at the box office. I just wish he were less Corden and more Yvan.
Scott Ellis directs the production at speed, yet wisely pauses sometimes to let the audience savor such bits as the cast members snacking on olives, which, although it does zip to advance the plot, is a wonderful scene that showcases how funny you can be without saying a word. David Rockwell’s scenic design serves up a gray-area-with-accents that perfectly matches the emotional landscape among the three characters.
Neil Patrick Harris, James Corden (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
And the painting, oh the painting. It has more entrances and exits than any of the actors, is peered at, discussed, carried on and off stage by its stretchers, propped up on furniture, endlessly, relentlessly, visibly, well, white. The whole “it’s white” vs “it has brushstrokes and implicit colors” issue becomes quite interesting once it’s actually hung on the back wall of Serge’s apartment, at the end of the play, and it’s actually possible to do your own evaluation. I wondered if the painting that was hung was the same one they’d used up to that point, because I swear, there were brushstrokes and visible implicit colors. Or was I, like Serge, seeing what I wanted to see?
At the Music Box
239 W. 45th St.
Running time: 1:40, no intermission
Through December 21, 2025
