ART–REVIEW –23 April 2026 ****

THEATRE

Written by Yasmina Reza
At Comedy Theatre until 17 May 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ★★★★ (4)

This review is published only on this blog. A radio review will air on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 2 May 2026. KH

Damon Herriman, Richard Roxburgh & Toby Schmitz-Photo Brett Boardman

Art remains a deliciously barbed dissection of male friendship, taste and the fragile scaffolding of shared values. Yasmina Reza’s script, in Christopher Hampton’s deft translation, still cuts cleanly, its irony intact, its arguments spiralling with surgical precision.

 

The premise is deceptively simple: a painting — white, expensive, and, to some eyes, absurd — becomes the fault line along which a long-standing friendship fractures. But this is no mere comedy of manners. Reza spins a sticky, hilarious web of intellectual one-upmanship, insecurity and barely suppressed rage. The men spar, spit and circle one another, their certainties dissolving as quickly as they are asserted.

 

Damon Herriman’s Serge is all cool hauteur and quiet provocation, a man intoxicated by his own cultural authority. Herriman lets the character’s smugness bloom just enough to invite attack. Opposite him, Richard Roxburgh’s Marc is gloriously combative — pompous, rigid and increasingly unhinged. Roxburgh finds both the humour and the menace in Marc’s outrage, revealing a man terrified that the rules he lives by are no longer shared.

 

Between them, Toby Schmitz’s Yvan is the perfect, flailing buffer — anxious, ingratiating, and quietly despairing. Schmitz brings a nervy physicality and comic timing that makes Yvan’s desperate attempts at conciliation both absurd and oddly moving.

 

Under Lee Lewis’s brisk direction, the production embraces the volatility of these fracturing relationships. Alliances shift with dizzying speed; each man is, in turn, isolated, victimised and exposed. The downward trajectory of their affection feels both inevitable and shocking.

 

The design supports this precision. Charles Davis’s spare, elegant set is itself a kind of blank canvas, allowing the actors’ emotional chaos to supply the colour. Paul Jackson’s lighting adds a cool, formal sheen with stylish lamps and sculpted light that quietly echo the play’s preoccupation with aesthetics and perception.

 

It is still extraordinary that a play about people arguing over art can be so riveting. Reza skewers critical theory, satirises the art world and, more pointedly, exposes how precariously friendship rests on presumed common ground. A tiny shift in taste becomes a seismic rupture.

 

Funny, fierce and uncomfortably recognisable, this Art proves that the smallest differences can have the largest consequences.

 

By Kate Herbert

 

Cast
Marc – Richard Roxburgh
Serge – Damon Herriman
Yvan – Toby Schmitz

Creative Team
Director – Lee Lewis
Lighting Design – Paul Jackson
Set & Costume Design – Charles Davis
Original Music – Max Lambert