Theatre / “Art” by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton, directed by Shelly Higgs. At The Street Theatre until September 11. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

IN a rare departure from its usual practice of presenting original Australian plays, The Street Theatre has chosen a 20th century classic by French playwright Yasmina Reza for the mainstage directorial debut of Shelley Higgs.

It’s a sophisticated production  with an elegantly until set by Imogen Keen and entertaining lighting design by Gerry Corcoran, who plays with the possibilities  of a blank canvas.

In this celebrated 1994 work, Reza deals a savage blow to the concept of complementarity in human relationships as three old mates duck and weave around their differences.

Briefly, Serge (Shane Dundas) and Marc (Christopher Carroll) are both high-functioning professionals, sophisticated and knowledgeable, with Marc enjoying a touch of authoritarianism as he asserts his opinions over the others.

The third friend, Yvan, (Craig Alexander) is the loser of the trio, a man of many careers who is about to be married to “a gorgon”.

They’ve been rolling along in a comfortable three-cornered relationship for many years until Serge decides to assert his autonomy by paying $200,000 for a “white-on-white” painting – think Mark Rothko.

With uncanny insight, Reza shows how a single act can lead to the unravelling of friendships which are, it seems, built on sand.

What follows is a scenario featuring verbal sparring, matey physical contact, mawkish self-pity, pigheaded arrogance and eventually a great sacrifice on the part of Serge to save the friendships – but is it a sacrifice at all? Reza suggests not.

It is, frankly a talky play that requires three actors operating at a high level of verbal skill, but in choosing Dundas, Carroll and Alexander to play the friends, director Higgs has cleverly chosen three masters of physical theatre to balance the wordplay with physical gags, which are often replicated upstage by the characters in their offstage moments

Rubbery-faced and bodied, Dundas leaps around the stage, while Carroll, in a miraculous transformation from his native Irish accent, plays his straight man, superior and uncompromising.

Alexander plays the negotiator of the three, affectionately bumbling but in the end as little able as the others to cope with the breakdown in the relationship that  emerges.

Reza’s style of humour is lightly satirical and the dialogue full of audience-pleasing irony, eliciting gurgles of laughter rather than uproarious guffaws.

Marc is seen munching on homeopathic pills by his trendy partner Paula, Ivan, resorts to food when the going gets rough and Serge resorts to subterfuge.

But in the end, “Art” is not so much a comedy as a serious exploration of the tenuousness of human adult relationships.

I say human, because in my view, although there’s a certain amount of masculine strutting, the situation could just as easily apply to female and mixed-gender relationships, giving food for thought.

Reza knows where to put the knife in and delights in undercutting everything she sets up – a genuinely moving outburst from Alexander as Ivan is quickly weakened by Serge’s quip that they’ve had quite enough pathos.

A breathtaking scene of self-sacrifice involving the large painting is undercut when in the very next scene, we find that it wasn’t a sacrifice at all.

Finally, to the central prop of the evening – the painting itself.

Described to us as a white-on-white painting with lines on it, when we actually get to see the $200,000 work it looks to be a large frame with butcher’s paper stretched over it, and so it is, for practical stage reasons seen in one of the last scenes of the night. A theatre joke perhaps, but one which could have been handled differently.

But this is an absorbing evening in the theatre that exposes the vulnerability of adult relationships in the modern world.