Theatre review: ART
Yasmina Reza’s sharp 90s comedy gives Richard Roxburgh, Damon Herriman and Toby Schmitz a broad canvas for a laugh-out-loud ‘deconstruction’ of art, friendship and human messiness.
Serge (Damon Herriman) has acquired a new painting. It’s not just any painting – it’s one by a notable contemporary artist, and Serge paid €160,000 for it. His friend Mark (Richard Roxburgh) doesn’t know what’s worse: the cost of painting or the fact that it’s essentially a white painting with some white lines on it. Coming at the artwork – and indeed at art – from two totally different perspectives, the men prove equally superior in their opinions and stubborn in their conceit, thus creating the major complication in the hilarious, fast-paced and whip-smart ART. Throw in a third character – mediator and affable clown – and you’ve got yourself a play about a triad of friends who are as different from one another as a Monet, a Duchamp and a Basquiat, and in theatre, three is always a crowd.
ART is French writer Yasmina Reza’s 1994 worldwide smash of a play, this time under former Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company Lee Lewis’s direction (Prima Facie – the original production). Written and directed by women, it’s a ‘friends play’, but not necessarily a ‘buddies play’. The subject feels grounded in female territory, where a trio of friends begins as a good idea, but through the years can never seem to sustain itself. Too much history and jealousy and gossipy slips. Secrets get told – or shouted. Ensuring the characters are three males is one of the play’s clever turns, and highly lauded actors Damon Herriman, Richard Roxburgh and Toby Schmitz all excel in their roles.
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Herriman (Better Man, Judy and Punch, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) is expansive and arrogant as Serge, while Roxburgh’s Mark (Rake, The Correspondent, Elvis) is a self-proclaimed renegade revelling in his smugness. Both are beacons onstage as characters wrapped tightly in their egos, but it’s Schmitz (Boy Swallows Universe, The Artful Dodger, Grief is the Thing with Feathers) in his role as Yvan who is a clear crowd pleaser. Written in the 90s, Yvan would’ve been the character not taken seriously by the audience, just as he’s not taken seriously by his oldest friends. But in 2026, masculine sensitivity is a sure sign of enlightenment, and Yvan, in his track suit and t-shirt, with his easy-going neutrality, becomes not only the jester, but the most relatable and sound character on stage.
Charles Davis’s set design is smart and slick, a kind of new-money 90s pad with basic black, white and grey, and metallic furniture on plush cream carpet. It’s a perfect setting for pitting one of the greatest questions ever asked – ‘What makes good art?’ – against turn-of-the-century relational breakdowns. Coating that premise in laugh-out-loud comedy is a winning move, and with such stellar creatives at the helm, the outcome is gold. As quoted in the flashy, finely-written profile found in the performance’s program (well worth the extra cash), Roxburgh says, “I’ve been trying to locate myself in the territory of the bittersweet for such a long time.”
That’s what this latest State Theatre of South Australia’s co-production is: bittersweet, though jokes abound. With Schmitz’s pitch-perfect sensitivity, and Herriman and Roxburgh’s impeccably-timed banter, it’s an intelligent kind of absurdity. Human messiness at its worst and best.
ART continues at Her Majesty’s Theatre until May 24
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