Three men and a painting

Art plays at the Repertory

By Robert Von Stein Redick

Art runs through April 8 at the Seacoast Repertory Theatre. Call (603) 433-4472.

“What does a man despise?” asks the great philosopher Frank Herbert. “By that is he truly known.” If so, then Mark, a well-heeled engineer in his forties, makes himself known in a matter of seconds. What he hates is a huge rectangular canvas, plain white but for some nearly invisible scratches, for which his oldest friend Serge has just paid a preposterous sum. “It’s a ’70s Antrios!” the ebullient Serge declares. “Worth mentioning — he’s going through a similar phase now.” Marc giggles, then gapes in disbelief. “Serge,” he says, with the voice of one betrayed. “You haven’t paid $200,000 for this piece of shit?”

On such an apparently slight foundation, author Yasmina Reza constructs Art, one of the funniest and most elegant plays of recent years. The darling of male actors since its 1994 premiere (with the likes of Albert Finney, Robert DeNiro and Alan Alda contending for its three parts in London and New York), Art came to our region in a powerhouse staging last summer at the Ogunquit Playhouse, directed by the inimitable Judd Hirsch. The current Seacoast Repertory production is less star-studded, but that doesn’t prevent it from touching the raw nerves exposed in Reza’s spare and merciless prose. Bill Humphreys lends Marc the squirms and sighs of a man whose self-confident veneer shelters the heart of a bully, afraid of losing his closest friend to a rival named Modernity. Serge (Anthony Ejarque) by contrast, is a moderately cultured man whose recent acquisitions (the white canvas, the black turtleneck) reflect his urgency to become hyper-cultured. Between these two is dumpy Ivan (Tad Allyn Doyle), born without the ego gene, and hence the perfect lightning rod: long before Marc and Serge confess their mutual contempt for each other, they are abusing helpless Ivan for not taking sides in their sharp, and sharply hilarious, battle. He is spineless, a coward, an “amoeba.” In this context, the words translate to “sane.”

Words in Art are often less important than the long face or smoldering glance, those unwritten notes of synergy between actors. The synergy of director Roy M. Rogosin’s production occasionally sputters. The first third of the performance I attended charged through the lovely pauses in Reza’s script without exploiting them, although later these vital breathing-spaces came into their own. When they do, this threesome exhibits just how sublime a comedy can be, when it engages something more than one’s desire to draw moustaches on the faces of the revered.

Robert von Stein Redick can be reached at robvsredick@earthlink.net.