Art, the UK tour play review

After a brief look at the cover and reviews of Art, I suspected it to be a simple low-key, hearty laugh-fest based on different perceptions of art. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This play is about far more than humorously showing different sides of a painting, it’s about seeing things that you’ve kept hidden for so long in a sight so obscure, you start doubting your own motives and friendships. Every laugh is delicate because of just how intricate and insightful the situations of these ying and yang characters are, with the amount of emotional weight showing how dangerous art (and £200,000 haha) can be when you realise the insecurities of your relationships when your paths cross at an unknowing milestone. This is truly an oddball gem of theatre.

Nigel Havers, BAFTA nominee for his role in Chariots of Fire and starred in Coronation Street and Don’t Wait Up, does an outstanding job as the philosophical and fluent-minded Serge who has just bought an expensive plain-white painting and shows great pride in his obscure purchase. Denis Lawson, known for playing Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars, plays the stern, older-fashioned, self-righteous Marc, who’s outraged at Serge for spending a small fortune on ‘a piece of white shit’, gradually using it to tear holes in his character to try and prove he’s right. The wonderfully experienced acting between these two is simply electrifying towards the chemistry, as Serge starts to question his motif, leading him to using his insight for art into deception into ripping open the little flaws Marc has.

And then there’s Stephen Tompkinson (known for his roles in DCI Banks, Chancer, and Wild At Heart) who does a top-notch performance as Yvan: the inbetweener of the group who consistently falls flat in forming an independent opinion of the painting as he tries to satisfy both friends by laughing with Marc but telling Serge he likes it, only to backfire and end up with a chain of ridicule as the centre of the gradual separation, with him ending up consistently relating to his social situations, with Stephen’s use of overacting carving out every line flawlessly. The rant he gives to his friends about his dreaded wedding plans to which how it’s continuously stretched out and managed to be kept alive with Stephen’s phenomenal over-exaggerated acting is beyond impressive.

The setting is simply phenomenally crafted. The tall brutalist white walls give an incomparably focused feeling on the furniture and characters, with an occasional clever lighting use of blind marks shearing across the room giving a refreshing external feeling of awe and tension to the current position of the characters’ friendship. There’s also a cleverly-put metaphor where each character’s attributes are shown with their choice of chair: the set-in-stone Denis chooses the more uncomfortable old-fashioned chair whereas the more free-flowing Nigel chooses the more comfortable, modern one.

It’s set in 2 rooms, with the only difference being an old-style painting for Denis’ room. There’s hardly any difference between the painting and the white spot in the wall where the painting is in the other room, so can a white square truly have as much significance as a focused, colourful painting? There’s quite a handful of delicious symbolism to be found in the settings and lighting.

The delicate chemistry between the characters simply couldn’t be better. As humorously as it’s presented, such as Nigel having to take an obscene amount of ridicule before deducing that Denis ‘doesn’t like it’ (probably the centre of the two’s comedy being the storm produced from the intermix of Nigel’s fluid rhetorical insight and Denis’ contrastingly rock-hard, instant deductions), the amount of deceiving emotion and twist-turning actions that’s met with each laugh adds layers that simply couldn’t work anywhere else. Your sympathy towards Stephen rockets as the humorous presentation of his frustration of his wedding leads to it tragically being the anchor that pulls him down to being the stress ball of the other two’s feud.

Your insights to the deeper elements shift like sand, much like the feelings towards the painting. Simply fantastic writing by Yasmina Reza, although I think I may have occasionally gone a little TOO deep, as I thought of a philosophical meaning behind the massive punchline in the climax. I then got the luck to meet Denis and Stephen after, to which Stephen answered: ‘Nah. Just a load of random garble.’ to the joke.

The further it goes, the more the friendship starts to crumble as the sheer obscurity of the painting leads to great divides, with the characters gradually use their vivid disagreements to reveal their long-compressed personal feelings of each other, starting uneasily when Nigel claims Denis ‘lost his sense of humour’ when trying to respect his opinion: showing his firm prejudice is either shown as witty banterous remarks that seemingly defined him or outbursts of self-righteous frustration that Nigel unknowingly conjures (especially for £200,000!). It’s almost unbelievable how they’ve managed to stay friends for 25 years, which just makes you see it in a whole new light.

The show still stands impeccably as it did back in 1996, filled with delicious takes on friendship and different lengths and meanings of perception. The main message of the play can be summed with: perception without comprehension: a most dangerous combination!