Art (tour)

There’s an issue here, surely. What is billed as a new Harrogate Theatre production of Art, first performed in September 2003, proves to be nothing of the sort. Indeed, the programme spills the beans: “This production alone has already been performed in Chicago, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires,” it says.

All we have, in effect, is what Art has become most famous for: yet another cast change. Everything else – direction, design,lighting and sound – are simply re-heated from Matthew Warchus‘s commercial West End production and the commercial regional tour which started at the Sheffield Lyceum in February 2002. So how come it suddenly lays claim to funds allocated from the public purse for regional theatre production?

Precisely because of this pedigree, of course, pretty well all of what was previously good about the production remains so. Yasmina Reza‘s quintessentially French meditation on the nature of friendship (here exclusively male, though it could be maintained that the take is a feminine one) continues to evoke Sartre’s Huis Clos and nouvelle vague cinema simultaneously. This is despite a slight crudeness in James Whiteside‘s reproduction of Hugh Vanstone‘s original lighting design which spoils the sunlight-through-the-jalousies effect pervading the piece.

Nevertheless, the verbal pyrotechnics triggered by the acquisition of a white-on-white painting for 200,000 francs stand up well to a re-hearing and reveal themselves, thanks in no small part to Christopher Hampton‘s masterful translation, to be considerably wittier than was at first apparent.

Much enhanced clarity comes from the only new creative input in the production, that of the actors. This is a cast of very high calibre indeed. John Duttine‘s Marc is an icy, brooding literalist with the mien of Pagliaccio, constantly threatening to erupt in some sort of unpleasantness. While Christopher Cazenove‘s Serge is bonhomie and insouciance personified, mildly mocking but genuinely hurt by the lack of warmth in Marc’s rejection of the painting, rather than by the rejection itself.

Without the vocal resources of such heavyweight acting talent, Les Dennis proves to be the perfect foil to both of them in the role of the infinitely pliant Yvan, obsessed with the nightmare of his forthcoming nuptials. The long set-piece lamentation of his lot is delivered as a manic gabble which regrettably denies all subtlety of structure and timing, but which nonetheless deserves its round of applause for sheer chutzpah.

With hindsight, Harrogate Theatre’s new artistic director, Hannah Chissick, who is credited with the direction of this production, might have preferred to start her incumbency by directing a new production rather than by simply doing a staff job on the Warchus production; but she serves an impressive show well enough.

– Ian Watson (reviewed at Harrogate Theatre)