AT first glimpse you wouldn’t think a play about three privileged white blokes arguing over a painting would be a goer, but that play is “Art” by French celebrity playwright Yasmina Reza.

The central character is played by Shane Dundas, one half of the renowned comedy duo, the Umbilical Brothers.

I caught up with Dundas for coffee at The Street Theatre, where the show will run from September 6 under the direction of well-known dramaturg Shelly Higgs, featuring the talents of Dundas, Christopher Samuel Carroll and Craig Alexander.

Dundas, along with working partner David Collins, would normally be found travelling to places such as Tokyo, London or San Paolo, but covid took care of that for a while, so he’s been writing shows from home.

Not many people know that Dundas and his family live in Canberra, his home town. In fact, he got his start at Narrabundah College, Canberra CAE and TAU Theatre, ending up at Theatre Nepean, where he took his drama degree in the late 1990s and met Collins.

While he lived in New York City for a year in 1999, he’s resided happily in Canberra for the last 11 years, sometimes getting so comfortable that he’s found himself asking: “Do I need to be doing all this anymore?”

He’s pleased to be playing a “straight part” at The Street while preparing for the Brothers to get on the road again.

The duo are used to pretty sophisticated audiences who appreciate how they “take the theatrical paradigm and twist it”. In one show, for instance, they bring an imaginary child on stage.

“The audience is watching nothing on stage, but they get the joke – theatre is not naturalistic,” Dundas says. 

“We observe things and make them stylised and very specific.”

With the Umbilical Brothers diversion is the main aim, but “Art” is a scripted play by a famous European playwright, so it’s a different challenge.

“It’s called ‘Art’, but it’s not really about art, it’s about friendship and what binds people together,” he says.

“It asks the question as to whether friendship can survive the test of extreme, different views.”

It occurs to him that most of us say to ourselves when the going gets tough: “Let’s not go there… if we stay away from controversial topics it will be alright”.

In the play, his character, Serge, has bought a large white painting with white lines on it, in the tradition of Mark Rothko and the American minimalists.

This all enrages one of his friends, Marc played by Carroll, who is used to having the controlling part in the relationship.

On the other hand, Ivan, played by Alexander, who is about to get married and is being much derided for it, prefers to sit on the fence. 

“My character Serge incites the action,” Dundas says.

“I’m making a statement, I’m saying I am evolving… I used to follow Marc in art, but now I want to stake my claim, I’m saying: ‘Here I am, my friends’.”

Dundas is fascinated watching the Irish Carroll as Marc, whom he suspects must be going through some mental acrobatics in putting on an Australian accent, but says he’s doing it well.

“The hard thing in this play is capturing the psychological milieu,” he says.

He knows perfectly well that three white guys arguing over a white painting does not involve the female gaze, although Serge is divorced and hasn’t been successful in forming a relationship, so you could read between the lines. 

“The feeling to me is a bit like a ‘Seinfeld’ episode,” Dundas says, but he admits that even in the English translation by Christopher Hampton, it also has a European sensibility coming from the French tradition of verbal sparring and the rapid-fire dialogue as the basis of the comedy.

“At its heart, the play asks whether, if a friendship starts to fracture, where do you go?”

“Art”, The Street Theatre, September 6-11.