Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford – until 23rd February
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
5*****
Three men who have known each other for years find their rock-solid friendship fracturing. As they talk, fall out and realign, all sorts of hidden stuff comes to the surface. The thing that opens up the cracks is a very expensive, enigmatic, white-on-white painting. Is it art or is it s**t?
This play by Yasmina Reza has a cast of just the three, talking a lot in a cool white set that occasionally alters subtly (design and lighting by Mark Thompson and Hugh Vanstone respectively). It does no harm that they are played by Nigel Havers, Denis Lawson and Stephen Tompkinson: all of them are wonderful, and riveting to watch. They extract a lot of laughs from the apparent blankness of the painting, but this isn’t a tired comedy on modern art. It is about relationships, and what happens when people can’t keep up the polite façade of everyday appearances any more. The characters speak out all the complicated mixed feelings that underlie friendships, in a way that isn’t exactly realistic but is very truthful.
Reza wrote the original play in French. This translation is by playwright Christopher Hampton, who thinks that Reza is a great comic writer, while she herself thinks she is writing tragedy. It’s a good combination: the play is funny, but also very intense. Every word and gesture is important, and there’s no interval (it packs a lot into less than 90 minutes). Art caused quite a stir when it first appeared in London in 1996, and it still feels fresh and compelling.