You know the story by now: Serge has bought a very expensive painting—20,000 francs for a white-on-white minimalist abstract, but it could just as easily be $2,000 for a Thomas Kinkade. Marc is very disturbed—not so much by the dubious aesthetics of the purchase in question, but for what he suspects are its reflection of changing tastes and lifestyle on the part of his old friend. As the two of them squabble, their buddy Yvan, on the eve of his marriage into a stuffy bourgeois family, struggles desperately to preserve the male-bond sanctuary that he fears he will soon need more than ever.
The dynamic that drives the play, simply titled Art, is sufficiently universal to have gestated performances in virtually every country in the world boasting a theater to house it. But Yasmina Reza wrote her play in French, and Christopher Hampton’s is the definitive English translation, so until the copyright expires on both texts, American (and other foreign) productions must deal with topical and geographical references largely lost on their audiences—e.g., a landscape of the Carcassonne region vs. a landscape of the Cavaillon, or the fat content of Lyon’s provincial cuisine—as well as British idioms like ‘old chap’ and ‘bugger-all’.
Many directors, mistrustful of their patrons’ abilities to orient themselves to these exotic cultures, feel it necessary to tart up their interpretations with quasi-sitcom slapstick or elaborate replications of fashionable Paris bachelor apartments. Neither its budget nor its space in the Victory Gardens Greenhouse’s smallest studio (following its transplant from the likewise shabby Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center auditorium in Evanston) permits partners Blue Heron and Tinfish Theatres such embellishments, and so the actors are required to rely solely on their own talents.
Fortunately, there is no lack of these resources. Under the direction of Dejan Avramovich—assisted in no small part by William J. Norris—the trio of Marc Rita, Darren Jones and Dustin Ayers have had plenty of time to settle into their roles and acclimate to each other’s mannerisms, allowing them to banter with the comfortable camaraderie we expect of their characters. While certainly not our first, and unlikely to be our last, encounter with this popular play, the warmth generated by these comrades makes us hope for their reconciliation while encouraging us to take our own lesson from their widely differing perceptions of an innocent canvas.
Playwright: Yasmina Reza. At: Blue Heron Theatre (in conjunction with TinFish Productions)at the Victory Gardens Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-871-3000; $20. Runs through: Dec. 30