Daniel Benzali's Theatre Now comes to life with spare yet ...

In one of the many famous bits from the movie ?This Is Spinal Tap,? guitarist Nigel Tufnel shows off an album cover that has no photo, no text, no graphic image, just an unbroken field of black. ?It's like, how much more black could this be?,? he says. ?And the answer is none. None more black.?

Adjust the color (or lack thereof) and you have the point of contention in ?Art,? a Tony-winner by the acclaimed French playwright Yasmina Reza, in which a trio of friends nearly comes to blows over differing opinions when one of them buys a very expensive painting composed of a white background and a few barely perceptible white lines.

Serge, a financially ?comfortable? dermatologist has paid $200,000 for the painting, and speaks like a defensive aficionado. ?As far as I?m concerned, it isn?t white. By ?as far as I?m concerned,? I mean ?objectively.??

His best friend, on the other hand, might not be objective but definitely objects. And soon the painting is the white elephant in the room, a visually inert yet emotionally catalytic centerpiece of the changing relationships between longtime pals.

"Art"

When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 21st

Where: Gallery 903, 903 N.W. Davis St. (Sept. 15-16); Victory Gallery, 733 NW Everett St. (Sept. 21-23); Bullseye Gallery, 300 NW 13th Ave. (Sept. 28-30); Graeter Art Gallery, 131 NW 2nd Ave. (Oct. 5-7); Gallery 114, 1100 NW Glisan St. (Oct. 12-14), and Laura Russo Gallery, 805 NW 21st Ave. (Oct. 19-21).

In the new Portland company Theatre Now?s aptly spare production that opened Friday at Gallery 903 (and will travel to a different Northwest Portland gallery for each weekend of the run), Golden Globe nominee Daniel Benzali is a riveting presence as Marc, an aeronautical engineer, Serge?s longtime friend and, when it comes to artistic styles, a strident anti-modernist.

Shown the painting for the first time, Benzali?s Marc cranes his neck, bends his knees, purses his lips, wonders, ponders, puzzles, grins. And eventually asks Serge (played by the honey-voiced Sam Mowry as a big, wounded teddy bear), ?Why aren?t you laughing??

Actually, it?s Marc who?s adamant that the purchase is no laughing matter, accusing Serge of losing ?every ounce of discernment through sheer snobbery.?

But despite its title, the play isn?t really about aesthetics, or tastes or even opinions. As the story?s third wheel, an agreeable underachiever named Yvan (Jonah Weston), makes clear, it?s about the fraught nature of friendships; about alliances and allegiances, status and envy, competition and control.

As with Reza?s more recently written ?God of Carnage,? staged last season at Artists Rep, there?s deliciously dark fun and lots of laughs in the spiral from nice to nasty, as circumstances lead folks to let true feelings show. But just when it looks like Reza?s deeply cynical view of the human heart will lay waste to everyone once again, this story takes a reassuringly bright turn.?????? ?

Almost as bright as plain field of white.

-- Marty Hughley

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2012/09/daniel_benzalis_theatre_now_co.html

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