THEATER REVIEW: REP’s ‘ART’ Searing, wildly funny portrait of friendship in crisis

You may have come across Salvatore Garau’s 2021 artwork The Invisible Sculpture on your social media feed — literally invisible, with nothing physically there — that sold for €15,000. It’s immaterial. But hey, it is conceptual art. Then there’s the famous banana duct-taped to a wall, sold in 2024 for six million dollars.

In French playwright Yasmina Reza’s three-character play ART, the conceptual provocation in question is a plain white canvas, five feet by four, by a fictional artist named Antrios. This painting — blank and extravagantly priced — becomes the fissure point in a long-standing friendship between three men.

Marc (Freddie Sawyer of Apple TV’s Trying) is horrified that his friend Serge (Martin Sarreal of Bridgerton) would spend 200,000 francs on what he calls a “piece of white shit.” The psychological toll is such that Marc hilariously resorts to Gelsemium 9C pellets to steady himself. Caught in the emotional crossfire is Yvan (Filipino actor Bryan Sy), who desperately wants everyone to get along.

Reza’s play peels in three layers: the first, a mildly amusing debate on the aesthetics and value of modern art; the second, a revelation of Marc and Serge’s hypersensitivity toward each other, as they attack one another’s taste, intellect and worldview; and finally, a wrenching unraveling of the complexity of long-time friendships.

The genius of ART, first staged in 1994 and still remarkably timeless, lies in Reza’s ability to excavate emotional truths from cerebral comedy. Christopher Hampton’s 1996 English translation — used in the West End and on Broadway — is a marvel: rich with subtext, biting and wickedly funny.

With Repertory Philippines’ current staging, Filipino audiences get a rare opportunity to enjoy a play that won the Tony Award for Best Play (1998), the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy (1997) and France’s Molière Award (1995).

ART is not comedy in the broad, gag-driven, or slapstick sense. It is intellectual wit and psychological nuance, with Hampton’s elegant script laced with irony and cutting hostility. The text is a minefield of laugh-out-loud passive-aggressive remarks, semantic one-upmanship and emotional deflection. Through it all, Reza dissects the anatomy of male friendship — how pride can lead to competition, ego to cruelty and fear to hostility.

The production is perfectly cast. Sawyer’s Marc brims with controlled outrage and incredulity, delivering his lines with a sharp-edged tempo befitting a man who feels betrayed. Sarreal plays Serge as the smug fan of modernism, his performance bristling with both self-assurance and defiance. Sy, as the anxious peacemaker Yvan, provides comic relief without ever tipping into caricature.

Sawyer and Sarreal’s lines seethe with cloaked contempt and escalating tension. Their verbal jousting — their sensitivity to tone and ideological posturing — are a riot. Their resentment brews not over what is said, but how it is said, with presumed insult or condescension (“You uttered, quite seriously, the word deconstruction. It wasn’t so much the word deconstruction that upset me, it was the air of solemnity you imbued it with!”), and it will tickle your funny bone. And the next moment, they’re perilously close to emotional implosion.

Sy’s Yvan, dismissed as “spineless” and “opinionless,” ultimately emerges as the heart of the piece. His desperation and confusion, on top of his own personal problems, provide the play’s emotional beats. When his friends turn on him for refusing to take sides, accusing him of “sheer neutral spectator’s inertia,” it is hysterically funny.

You find yourself not just in stitches at the fight and the increasingly savage but humorous verbal attacks — you also begin to worry that these men’s friendship may be about to collapse entirely.

Victor Lirio’s direction is lean and precise, perfectly capturing the text’s verbal choreography. The minimalist set, controlled lighting design and music heighten the characters’ interiority, while the absence of an intermission maintains narrative momentum and dramatic pressure.

By curtain call, I found myself unexpectedly with a lump in my throat and tears welling in my eyes. ART is not, after all, a study on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of conceptual art. At its core, it’s a sharp study of friendship, loneliness and the unspoken grief of growing apart. It’s a must-see.

The play runs from 13 to 29 June at the REP Theater in Eastwood City.