Is an all-white painting sold by a famed artist for an eye-watering price “art” . . . or is it an artless swindle? This question forms the provocative and funny centre of Yasmina Reza’s Paris-set comedy ART, which is translated from the French by Christopher Hampton, and is playing until April 19 in a thoughtful, energetic production by the King Theatre Company’s (KTC) at King City’s historic Laskay Hall.
In the show, the apparently simple premise of two friends debating an art purchase becomes a springboard for examining the complicated geography of long-standing relationships. Confident and self-assured dermatologist Serge (a deliciously snarky Fred Kuhr) unveils the painting in question as his triumphant recent acquisition. His friend Marc (an edgy Josh Palmer) is appalled: he finds the painting an affront to both taste and reason. Caught in the crosshairs of the emerging feud is their affable and anxious mutual friend Yvan (a splendidly tortured Ganesh Thava) who is in the throes of finalizing wedding plans. What begins as an argument about art spirals into a deeper confrontation: about values, validation, and the roles the men play in one another’s lives.
Director Chloë Rose Flowers shapes the production with a well-considered precision, allowing the play’s rhythmic volleys of dialogue to breathe, while keeping the pace brisk. Her staging is nimble and unfussy, making smart use of Laskay Hall’s intimate one-room layout. Each of the men’s apartments is suggested not by a set change, but through simple shifts in lighting (designed by Lisa Van Oorschot) accompanied by Parisian-invoked piano music transitioning between scenes (Sound Design by Daniel Tessy).
The one simple scenic change – the small landscape painting in Yvan’s apartment, which contrasts the white painting in Serge’s – invites the audience to track the emotional terrain through physical space. Likewise, Serge and Marc’s costumes of solid dark-coloured shirts and black belted pants underscore their diametrically-opposed positions. Meanwhile, Yvan sports an argyle sweater over an untucked green shirt, suggesting his position as an in-between pleaser who sees both perspectives and most importantly, wishes to avoid conflict. Overall, the economy of design is a tactical success – signaling the characters’ internal contrasts, without getting in the way of the text.
Upping the ante to a near-immersive experience is the decision to feature original artworks (available for purchase) by local artists on the walls surrounding the audience. The gallery-like setting blurs the boundary between spectator of theatre and evaluator of art. Before the controversy over the white painting is even joined on stage, it positions art as something both individual and communal, and engages our aesthetic judgments. This deft curatorial touch reinforces one of the play’s central provocations: the question of whether art is only valuable if it resonates with us personally, or its worth can be something more . . . well, abstract?
The success of King Theatre Company’s ART rests mainly on the three performers, who rise to the challenge of the talky script with clarity and charisma. As Serge, Kuhr is an amalgam of assured defensiveness who wants to believe he is above his friends’ judgments . . . yet folds into self-doubt and then attack, when he is challenged. Kuhr’s performance mines his talent for physical comedy: with withering looks, sweeping hands and flailing arms, he captures the performative and exaggerated self-assuredness of a would-be collector trying to obscure the chinks of his wounded pride.
Palmer, returning to King Theatre Company after his turn in last summer’s Salt-Water Moon, brings a simmering intensity to the role of the mercurial Marc. His scathing delivery and pointed scorn are increasingly undercut by moments of real vulnerability, making clear that Marc’s enraged objections to the painting – all delivered with arch glowers and an increasingly reddening face – are a smokescreen for a more existential about who his friends are – and who he is. Palmer strikes this balance with a grounded precision.
And as Yvan, Thava’s comic timing and emotional openness steal nearly every scene he’s in. In lesser hands, Yvan’s rambling neuroses could descend into caricature, but Thava gives the character a warm humanity and everyman complexity that make him the emotional anchor of the piece. A monologue about his wedding invitation is a chaotically crescendoing tour-de-force – and his attempted mediation between Marc and Serge, delivered with the wide-eyed earnestness of a puppy, feels genuinely pained.
All together, the trio’s chemistry crackles. Their arguments feel uncomfortably real, laced with the stinging bites – honest and bruising – of a long acquaintance. And in their capable hands, the play’s elegant ending is a thoughtful, low-key, and even friendly nudge to the audience. It interrogates and slyly subverts our assumptions about both the value of art and the value of the friendship we have seen picked apart on the stage. Is it art if we think it is? Can a work of art hold inherent value – or is any value ascribed to it from without? Is art an individual experience or a collective agreement?
And is friendship itself a form of art, which must be negotiated with aesthetic, sentimental, and value-based judgment?
With this cannily staged, sensitively acted, and fresh-feeling second production, King Theatre Company uses a 31-year-old play in a 166-year-old venue to pose these topical questions and more. In the process, it establishes itself as an ambitious, capable new voice in the GTA’s theatre scene. And the warm response from the audience and nearly full house suggest that KTC is serving a vital and valuable need by creating art in and for the King City community.
ART runs until April 19, 2025 at Laskay Hall in King City. Reserve tickets at kingtheatre.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
