Deconstructed; again.
Art
At Her Majesty’s Theatre
Until May 24
Yasmina Resa’s play started its life in Paris in 1994, winning the author a Moliere Award before being acclaimed in many languages and many theatres around the world.
The satirical play is set around a high-priced painting depicting white objects on a white background. In short: white.
By the time it was presented in Adelaide in 2001 by State Theatre Company featuring that sublime comic actor Paul Blackwell its fame travelled ahead of it.
This time around it is a national touring production with a high-powered cast led by that Australian actor with a huge capacity for demonstrating outrage and disbelief: Richard Roxburgh.
Roxburgh plays Marc who has been invited by his old friend Serge, played by Damon Herriman, to come and look at his latest acquisition, a more or less blank white canvas. Price: 160,000 Euro.
Instead of doing the conventional thing, and sharing – or even feigning – admiration for Serge’s choice, Marc not only rejects the painting, but is personally insulted that his friend would even consider buying such a thing.
Reza’s choice of painting was ideal, because a minimalist, deconstructionist style can be nearly incomprehensible to “pretty picture” visual arts patrons. They can share that sense that this art must be the work of a charlatan.
Thirty years later it does not have quite the same effect – far more bizarre canvases are commonplace on high-priced gallery walls and auctions. Nevertheless, the idea of blank white canvas has many other levels to chime with the objects of this play.
The stakes escalate when their mutual friend Yvan (Toby Schmitz) joins the throng, and tries, mightily unsuccessfully, to find a middle way between these two. He unloads on his own mid-life crisis in speeches at a machine gun pace for no other reason than it is highly entertaining.
Reza has skilfully used reactions to the painting to spell out the characters of the three men. This is a comedy of manners, studying how three old friends can be brought to a point where they can destroy their long and enduring relationships.
Roxburgh’s Marc is well supported here, with the aspiring urbanity of Serge, and the disorganised chaos of Yvan’s life giving a spectrum of buttons to press.
Deconstruction in art is mirrored by these melt-downs on stage, and perhaps, like the idea of a blank canvas, it offers room for the old friends to talk about new beginnings.
This production originates from the Sydney Theatre Company and director Lee Lewis has exaggerated the physical performances of Roxburgh, Herriman and Schmitz to a point the Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges would appreciate.
That keeps us from having to consider whether the premise or the play make as much sense as it once seemed to, when pretentiousness about the arts was fairer game for comedy.