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A worthy box office favorite
Resident Ensemble Players presents Yasmina Reza’s Art
For a play set in the rarefied echelon of abstract painting—which boasts both rabid detractors and equally rabid fans—Art by French playwright Yasmina Reza continues to have a remarkably robust, popular, and varied life. You can see why it’s such a perennial favorite at University of Delaware’s Resident Ensemble Players (REP), where director Michael Gotch has mounted their current crisp, snappy, and terrifically enjoyable production.
Art explores how the friendship of three seemingly close men is threatened when one of them makes a surprisingly extravagant purchase. The play opens as dermatologist Serge shares his latest art acquisition, a shockingly expensive all-white painting, with his friends Marc (Hassan El-Amin) and Yvan (Lee E. Ernst), saying proudly that “it’s an Andrios—the museum has three!”
Marc, who fancies himself a connoisseur of fine things, says that the painting is “shit”, while Yvan, who has few opinions on any subject, tries to placate both sides, noting that “objects infuriate me.” Over the course of 90 swift-moving, back-and-forth, intermission-less minutes filled with biting banter and escalating bickering, the three men shred and then deconstruct their 15 years of friendship. Caught in a circle of insecurities, misconceptions, and the fear of being wrong, these three men crack apart their long-term relationship, leaving us (and them) to wonder: is it sustainable? Has it ever been? Can it be reconstituted, and if so, how?
REP’s perfect canvas
The audience enters the theater to cool jazz (part of Eileen Smitheimer’s crisp sound design) and an equally cool visual: an angular modern apartment (setting by New-York based designers Christopher and Justin Swader) with a raked asymmetrical stage that pushes the action ever-forward. Art unfolds at different times in each man’s apartment, where the midcentury-modern furniture remains the same and a simple change of the painting on the wall indicates a new abode. The set’s blank walls (maybe white like the painting, maybe not) are a perfect canvas for Dawn Chiang’s lights, sometimes white-hot, sometimes lusciously colored, and garnished with that sneakily gorgeous baseboard strip.
But heating up all the coolness are these three excited and exciting REP actors, whom Gotch stages with an easy, confident aplomb, allowing them the range and scope to parry and thrust like champion fencers. As members of a repertory company (not so common in American theater now), the three men and their director know one another at least as well as the play’s protagonists, and maybe better, adding to the emotional richness of this production. Even when they’re at their snarky worst, it’s joyful to experience the visceral glee of these actors working at the top of their respective games and loving it.
Intellectual and emotional fireworks
For such a vicious and elegant work, equally elegantly translated from the French by the great Christopher Hampton, the play itself is surprisingly resilient. Art may be timeless, but though Art is now over two decades old, it’s still a box office favorite. The show opened in 1994 in Paris, where it won the Molière Award, and has run there periodically ever since; one major production just ended, and another will return in September 2027. It played for six years in London, where it won an Olivier Award and opened in Broadway in 1998, where it won the Tony. On the boards now is an Australian national tour, and a star-studded New York production just closed in December.
An invigorating intellectual exercise like the one Reza sets up is something that we don’t often see onstage in modern works (well, there’s Tom Stoppard), and discourse as entertainment is in short supply these days. But here, ideas have weight and agency. Whether you like the play itself or not (I do, but two people did leave during the performance I saw), this audience was riveted by the performances, unusually silent and totally focused.
One of the reasons for the work’s ongoing popularity is purely practical: it has three actors, one set, great dialogue, and witty asides directly to the audience. But what’s truly attractive to theater folk and playgoers alike is that Art has those three enormous and juicy roles, equal in dramatic heft, that propel its intellectual and emotional premise and are artfully realized in this production.
A compelling mystery
The myriad questions that Reza raises about intimacy and pretense remain absolutely recognizable still. But another reason the play has remained such a hit is that Art posits a mystery, and as with all mysteries, the audience really wants to know how it ends. How do these three men resolve their plight? Do they stay friends or not? Dear playgoer, no answers here. This intense intellectual whodunnit demands that there be no spoilers for Art’s surprising conclusion.
What, When, Where
Art. By Yasmina Reza. Directed by Michael Gotch. $20-39, with discounts available. Through March 1, 2026, at Thompson Theatre (Roselle Center for the Arts, University of Delaware campus), 110 Orchard Road, Newark, Delaware. (302) 831-2204 or rep.udel.edu.
Accessibility
The theater is ADA-compliant and equipped with a hearing loop system that works with hearing aid t-coils, cochlear implants, and in-house hearing devices. For wheelchair and seating requests, call (302) 831-2204 or email [email protected].
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Gail Obenreder