Empty canvas

A guy buys this white painting.

It may sound like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the set-up for the thought-provoking, Tony Award-winning play Art, by French playwright Yasmina Reza, on stage this month at Brüka Theatre.

Though the painting is no joke to the man who bought it, one of the many questions that remains throughout the play is, “Is the joke on him, or everyone else?”

Serge (played by Gary Cremeans) is a dermatologist who isn’t necessarily wealthy, but is comfortable enough financially that when he falls in love with the painting by fashionable artist Antrios, he has no qualms about spending what many people would consider an exorbitant sum for it.

Marc (Androo Allen), his longtime friend, is a buttoned-up, level-headed engineer who is completely befuddled by Serge’s love for the painting. To his eyes, this thing is nothing but a couple of white lines painted across white canvas. And when he learns what Serge has paid for this “masterpiece,” he is stricken by sticker shock. How can someone he has cared about and respected actually like such a painting, or pay such a price for it? And if Serge is really that kind of man, what does that say about their friendship, the value Marc has placed on it and, by association, Marc himself?

As Marc struggles with these questions, and Serge works to overcome his strong need to be validated and have his friends like the painting, the two men rope in poor Ivan (Marvin Gonzalez), their hapless, waffling third musketeer. More interested in retaining friendships than speaking his mind, Ivan says what he thinks his friends want to hear about the painting, and hesitates to express his own confusion.

What I love about this play, which is sparsely plotted, scripted, set and cast, are the provocative questions it asks: What is art? How should it be valued? If it moves you, is that enough for it to be considered art? Can a painting that appears to be nothing actually move you at all? Can you put a “fair value” on taste? What is friendship, and can you be friends with someone whose taste you truly despise? What brings friends together, if not shared tastes or values? Why are these men even friends?

Like another of Reza’s commercially successful plays, The God of Carnage,

Art features tersely scripted moments between people who are, by turns, completely relatable and horribly unsympathetic. They engage in constant wordplay, yet so much goes unsaid. Like the 2-foot-by-4-foot white “masterpiece,” they leave the blanks to be filled in by the audience’s imagination. Even the Brüka staging—minimalist and sleek, cold like the characters themselves—seems to imply that these men have few soft edges or warmth between them.

Critical to making this show work is strong acting, and this Brüka production certainly has it. As Marc, whose black-and-white engineer’s mind disdains the pretentious use of words like “deconstruction,” Allen is marvelously condescending. He sighs, rubs his head and even stands with contempt. Gonzalez’s Ivan is rumpled and pathetic, but when, in the second act, he enters Serge’s apartment and breathlessly expounds on the reason for his late arrival, the energy and ire he maintains make him a joy to watch.

There were moments throughout the show that felt slow, too quiet, and the final scene seems to unravel a bit. The script seems to want tightening there. But overall, I love what the play makes me think about. And I certainly will never look at a white canvas the same way again.