Shades of white go beyond the pale for classic art-lover Marc when he visits his best friend one day to find he has purchased a polarising artwork.
Not just any old landscape, portrait or still life, but avant garde, contemporary art. White paint, on a white canvas. That’s all.
In ART, opening at QPAC to a standing ovation on its Australian tour, three friends discover how something as seemingly innocuous as a painting can reveal so much about their identities, and almost end their friendship.
It is a flagellation, an indictment, delivered through humour, of intellectualism and so-called artistic judgement.
Though written by a French playwright, Yasmina Reza, the lampooning of “high culture” appeals to an Australian audience, to our larrikinism and dislike of snobbery.
Marc (Richard Roxburgh) is incredulous that Serge (Damon Herriman) could have bought such a thing. Could have paid $160,000 for it, no less! He thought he knew his friend, and the friend he knew would never have done such a thing.
Meanwhile, easy-going Yvan (Toby Schmitz) – “the joker” to his friends – attempts to reconcile the two, mostly succeeding in just riling them up further as they object to his passiveness.
While the audience might at first sympathise with Marc, ridiculing such a seemingly incomprehensible choice, they soon come to understand that it is not just Serge’s postmodern taste that is being satirised, but Marc’s closemindedness.
Defining yourself in opposition to something – as Marc does with modernism and Serge does with convention – leads to irreconcilable differences when it is inseparable from their identities.
It turns out “the joker” has more emotional intelligence than his supposedly intellectual friends.
The sleek, mostly monochromatic set and costumes by Charles David highlight the stark contrasts between character perspectives, as does dramatic lighting by Paul Jackson, while the sparse yet plaintive piano chords that accompany scene changes by Max Lambert and David Letch add to the feeling of loneliness and separation.
It’s not only the play’s dialogue that provides bandwidth for humour to shine through between all the sharp words exchanged, but the pauses and gestures, no doubt handled with dexterity thanks to director Lee Lewis.
Roxburgh, Herriman and Schmitz each have significant acting experience under their belt, and the refinement of their skills was evident in their delivery – knowing when to deadpan, and when to play up the line to full effect.
For example, Herriman, in Serge’s insistence that his white artwork is not, in fact, white, but pale shades of colour, exclaiming with all seriousness, “I wouldn’t like it if it was white!”
The tenuous resolution to their disagreement comes in the form of not a Chekhov’s gun, but a “Chekhov’s pen”, mentioned at the beginning of the play by Yvan (who works at a stationery shop), as a felt tip pen that “writes on any surface”…
You’ll have to see for yourself what becomes of the painting in the end.
Co-produced by Rodney Rigby, Marriner Group, Paul Wheelton AM and State Theatre Company South Australia, ART will have you laughing out loud and questioning your own stubborn beliefs.
ART only runs until March 22 – get your tickets at qpac.com.au/whats-on/2026/art.
