By Keith Kreitman

Theater review

“Art,” a 90 minute one-act comedy-drama by Yasmina Reza recently mounted by the Palo Alto Players, is a strange sort of bird, yet one that has won all kinds of awards, including a Tony on Broadway as 1998’s best play. Somehow, I wonder why.

There is really nothing memorable about what turns out to be a three-party discussion that not only revolves about an argument about the aesthetic and monetary value of a piece of art but degenerates into the deconstruction of a 15-year-old friendship between three middle-aged Parisian males.

One wonders what caused these three to be such good friends at all. The divorced Serge (Brian Benston), a successful dermatologist and a dilettante art modernist with an expansive personality, purchases an avant-garde four-by-five canvas by a currently fashionable painter for the extraordinary price of 200,000 francs.

Intellectual friend Marc (Damian Vega), a successful aeronautical engineer, is a snobbish classicist and a more rigid and unhappy personality. He is appalled at the price, considering the painting is nothing more than an all-white background with white lines. He sees nothing at all in the work.

The soon-to-be-married third friend, Yvan (Christian Thomas), is an economically struggling but more flexible personality who goes whichever way the wind blows. Wishing only to be liked, he attempts to mediate the controversy.

It all degenerates into a semantic struggle where some words are twisted into alternate meanings and some dissected until they have no meaning at all.

This is the sort of theatrical concept - the play of ideas - that wins great artistic favor in Western Europe but is a little mind twisting for American audiences. It is not that it lacks humor, but one struggles to keep on track with where the whole thing is going.

The artistic controversy is only the catalyst that peels back the skin of human relationships to uncover the little irritations and larger issues suppressed in their friendships, only to fester underneath. The jealousies, the ego hurts, the competitive frustrations and the protection of the sense of self, ooze out.

Serge and Marc become cruel in their exchanges that even degenerate into a violence that ends up only hurting Yvan, the most innocent, vulnerable and sweet of the three. Nevertheless, there is enough humor and fine acting to make this a pleasant evening of theater. The actors that director Dave Sikula has chosen are perfect for the roles.

Christian Thomas, especially, with his heart-warming, bemused countenance and manner of movement, is just perfect for the role of Yvan. You just want to hug him in his hurt puppy dog efforts to calm the emotional storm between his friends.

Within the play itself, he has one hysterical monologue about the wording of the invitation to his wedding and his problems with his guilt-projecting mother, the array of stepmothers and his post-adolescent fiancée and her opinions. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Question: Is this a classic, or minor classic - as judged by all of the awards - that will linger in the memory, or just a trifling evening in the war of ideas that will fade soon after?

I have forgotten most of it already.