Much Ado About ART? APT Tells It All!

Ed Heinzelman, An Intuitive Perspective

Yasmina Reza wrote Art in 1994, in French. And the American Players Theatre are presenting an English translation by Christopher Hampton that is a quintessential French existential comedy. And despite the translation, director Jackson Gay has lost nothing of the Frenchness here! So this is the play for the Francophile, Art Lover, and Theater Goer in you!

Art features three characters, long long time friends, middle aged and fairly successful. Serge, a doctor, Marc, an engineer, and Yvan, who is soon to be married, is currently working in sales. And our set fits all of the parameters set forth by Reza, a simple apartment setting that changes location depending on the occupant, Serge, Marc, or Yvan. As Reza stated and the program reinforces: nothing changes, except for the painting on the wall. Kate Noll’s set is perfect but I will get to the details in a bit!

Art is played complete without intermission but it isn’t quite a traditional act/scene format. Instead we observe a series of vignettes as the friends interact in pairs or in the full group and each, at times, will step forward solo into a spotlight and address the audience directly. So there is some backstory and story line set up that we alone are privy to directly.

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