‘Art’ explores ire of the beholder

Ball-istic, yes.

Though the sum would scorch Ralph's shorts, their argument wouldn't be over whether the bowling ball is worth that much - in 1950s dollars no less.

They'd fight because the purchase would lay bare Ralph's own poverty. For all the things they share, it would be an act that marks them as different, no longer able to sink into the feeling that they stand allied against the world.

Such acts open rifts in friendships that aren't easily closed. Friends don't let friends drive drunk. They also don't go for it when they gas up new Maseratis and turn off well-worn paths of old friendships.

"Art," the comedy by Yasmina Reza that opens the New Century Theatre's summer season, is about a three-way friendship that suffers when one member, a dermatologist, breaks ranks by spending $200,000 for an all-white contemporary painting. (Reza is a French actress, author and playwright; in the play's debut in Paris, the painting cost $50,000.)

It's a tight and funny play, nimbly directed by Ed Golden, that turns not on matters of aesthetics but on simple things like trust, respect and the inevitability of change. It asks what it is that friends owe one another. What amount of stupidity will they forgive or accept?

Is it wrong for friends to sharply challenge each other? Who's the more loyal friend to the emperor, the one who bows or the one who snorts in disgust and points out the guy's naked?

The fact that these friendships are among men - the gender attuned to uncluttered, unspoken alliances - means the crisis will burn hot at the start and then smolder, as the friends search haplessly for ways to work it out.

To Serge (Sam Rush), the buyer and beholder, the painting is a treasure - a symphony of off-whites and grays, even a spot of brighter color, that's worth every penny. He brings it out to show with such pride, such expectation it seems he might burst.

Rush has grown a goatee for the role, which Serge would wear as an unimaginative badge of sophistication. Rush gives us a man who's awakened to a new passion. He thinks it's the love of art, but it is more likely dizziness from social climbing.

After years studying those awful rashes on people's bodies, he's hooked on the feeling that comes from a daring act.

To his old friend Marc (Kenneth Tigar), the entirely white painting - albeit with a few diagonal white lines - is preposterously overvalued. Marc, an engineer, can't help calling it junk, in a more scatological term.

He delivers a scolding that no amount of apology can later undo. It hurts, for Tigar summons a quiet but deep resentment over Serge's purchase. You can't blame him, for his outrage is our own. The painting is a joke.

To their mutual friend Yvan (Buzz Roddy), the blowup is something to be settled down, especially since his own life is roiled by arguments between future in-laws over the wording of his wedding invitation.

Roddy gives us an average guy - one incapable of daring or criticism - who's caught in many middles.

In scenes that quiver with energy and humor, Tigar, Roddy and Rush - all of them in top form - show how artlessly old friends can handle each other's feelings, as the crisis over the painting blooms.

Yvan declines to take a stand on the purchase, mincing about as Serge displays the painting for him in his own private viewing. Yvan's searching for the right angle, but he might as well be looking for the door, so badly does he want to avoid saying what's obvious.

They laugh - Yvan in discomfort, Serge at the heady wonder of his extravagance.

Later, Yvan tells Marc about that laugh. "It may have been a genuine laugh but it wasn't for the right reason," Marc insists. "Art" splits those sorts of hairs.

Serge, who's naturally angered by Marc's attack, tells him that Yvan "got" the painting right away.

Yvan asks Marc why he's making a fuss. Buying the painting isn't hurting anyone, he ventures. "It's doing harm to me," Marc says.

The action jumps among the homes of all three men, with set changes accomplished by hanging a different painting on the back wall. It's a landscape for Marc, a cheesy "motel painting" for Yvan and a bare wall for Serge, since he's always bringing the white painting out of hiding in a back room.

Midway through the 90-minute play, which is performed without an intermission, Roddy delivers a long and comic monologue about Yvan's premarital woes, as if to retest the empathy we already see is so lacking between Marc and Serge.

Why is Marc so disappointed in Serge?

It isn't just that he's paid so much for a painting. It's because Marc fears his friend Serge, by turning so grandly into a "collector," can't possibly value him as much any longer.

Once, Serge looked up to him as a maverick, Marc recalls, the one who broke new ground.

When roles reverse, trust goes haywire. "I loved the way you saw me," Marc eventually tells Serge. "I was always grateful to you for thinking me a man apart."

Their 15-year friendship implodes. "Art" gives us a slow-motion view of the disaster. The struggle these friends mount to get back on the road together is engaging and, ultimately, like all those old "Honeymooners" episodes, quite tender.

"Art" continues through June 30 in the Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre on Green Street in Northampton. Tickets are $19, or $17 for seniors. For reservations and information on show times, call the theater box office at 585-3220.

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