Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
written by Yasmina Reza, directed by Morris Panych
Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
March 18-April 10, 2010
What do you say to your best friend who has just spent a fortune on a large all-white painting? Do you lie and praise it or do you tell the truth? Either course risks ruining the friendship. That is the crux of French playwright Yasmina Reza’s 1994 play ‘Art’, now receiving its first professional production in Toronto since 1999. The present Canadian Stage production could easily be as exciting as the 1999 Mirvish production if only director Morris Panych would delve more deeply and quell his passion for over-production.
The roles of the three friends are all well cast. Colin Mochrie exudes a sense of self-satisfaction as Serge, the one who spends 200,000 francs for that most abstract of abstract paintings. Serge’s friend Marc, ably played by Peter Donaldson, is infuriated by Serge’s pride and now this physical proof that he has broken away from Marc’s standards of taste. He views the white painting as personal insult and a sign that he has broken their bonds of friendship. As the third friend Yvan, Evan Buliung gives the most exhilarating performance of the evening. His five-minute-long, non-stop explanation for being late is a tour-de-force of itself. Yvan, his life in chaos as his falls headlong into marriage, tries to reconcile Serge and Marc with the result that they both turn on him. In 1999, director William Joseph Barnes allowed Yvan’s breakdown to strike a serious note in this comedy to show exactly how harmful the argument among friends had become. It’s a shame that Panych glides over this chance to bring out the play’s emotional depth.
Reza’s genius lies drawing complex implications from the simplest situations. It is, therefore, highly inappropriate for Panych to mess up Reza’s aesthetics, especially by projected films between each scene to show how one character travels to visit another, as if we were too ignorant to figure out scene changes ourselves. Besides, they are in the style of 1960’s French Nouvelle Vague that has nothing to do with the setting of 1990’s Paris. Luckily, these misjudgements aren’t enough to ruin the play. The white painting shows that value is not absolute but derives from context. Reza implies that the same is true about people whose worth lies as much in their bonds with others as in themselves. ‘Art’ has become a modern classic that every theatre-goer should know. If you missed it back in 1999, be sure to see it now.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-03-19.
Photo: Peter Donaldson, Evan Buliung and Colin Mochrie. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2010-03-19
‘Art’