'Art' looks at fragile bond between men

Friendship can be as inscrutable as a piece of conceptual art: challenging, sometimes frustrating, often delightful and fragile if clumsily handled. While it may not qualify as a masterpiece in the strictest sense of the word, sustaining a friendship is an art unto itself.

Playwright Yasmina Reza examines this notion in "Art," a succinct and witty dissection of male friendship: what binds them together and tears them apart; the power plays they engage in and the shifting alliances that define their relationships.

One of the most compelling things about Reza's tidy one-act about friends falling out over a piece of art has to do with the antagonism that underscores the often uneasy camaraderie between its trio of articulate, upper middle-class aesthetes. The term "frenemies" (coined by HBO's "Sex and the City") best describes these fussy, hyper-aware intellectuals who parse their compliments and probe the chinks in each other's psychological armor as a way of maintaining their own intellectual and emotional superiority. The problem is, Reza never reveals the basis of their friendship. They don't seem to have an emotional investment in each other. As a result, the audience never becomes emotionally invested in them, making the survival of their friendship of little consequence. While "Art's" subtext inspires intellectual musing, its low stakes make for weak drama.

That said, Reza's comedy gets a decent revival at St. Charles' Steel Beam Theatre, where it unfolds on Sam Dempsey's minimalist, monochromatic set. Director Terrence Domschke's cast does a nice job suggesting the subtle ambivalence and faint yet still palpable animosity that underscores the relationship between the men. However, opening night found the production not as sharp as it should have been. Despite a brisk beginning, the production stumbled due to some tentative line readings, which in turn threw off the pacing. As a result, Reza's drollery got lost and her barbs didn't cut the way they might have.

The story centers on a purchase of an expensive, all-white painting by Serge (played with a combination of neediness and defiance, plus a hint of arrogance, by Daniel A. Scurek), a dermatologist and modern art aficionado. This angers his rather supercilious and controlling friend Marc (Ed Pierce in a performance of controlled fury and frustration), an aeronautical engineer who favors neoclassicism over postmodernism and who dismisses Serge's purchase as a joke. He tries to win over to his side another friend, Yvan (Brad Davidson, convincing as a milquetoast), a skittish, conciliatory stationery salesman who more often than not finds himself serving as a buffer between his contentious pals. On the surface, their disagreement over the merits of the "white square" serves as a debate between the modern and the traditional but actually reveals how tenuous their friendship is and how easily those bonds can shatter when people stop conforming to certain expectations. As the tension between them escalates, the debate over art degenerates into personal attacks until the men come to question what brought them together in the first place.

"Why do we see each other?" wonders Yvan as the ever-widening cracks in their relationship threaten to break it apart entirely.

We wonder the same thing. What keeps them together. Habit? Inertia? Something approximating affection? The question never gets answered. Instead, Serge, Marc and Yvan settle for an uneasy detente that maintains that inscrutable thing called friendship.

'Art'

Steel Beam Theatre

Rating: 2½ stars