There’s beaucoup talk these days about the manosphere. But French playwright Yasmina Reza managed, mille mercis, to deal with one aspect of it very successfully in 1994 via Art, which reached Broadway (in Christopher Hampton’s translation) in 1998. The welcome run starred, in alphabetical order, Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina, and nabbed the Tony for Reza (best play) and for Molina (best actor). Matthew Warchus, an eventual Tony nominee, directed.
That manosphere quadrant is being invaded again, zut alors, with a revival crisply directed by Scott Ellis and this time marquee-boasting, in alphabetical order, Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris. Although bowing early in the 2025-26 season, it already shows strong signs of eventual Tony noms when the time comes.
So what aspect of the manosphere is under Art‘s keen surveillance? Serge (Harris), a well-heeled dermatologist, has purchased a painting. He has paid $300,000, a steep enough price tag that seems even ridiculously steeper to longtime friend Marc (Cannavale) when he gets a gander at it.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
What does he see? Nothing, as far as he can fathom. What he’s looking at is an entirely white canvas painted flat white. Serge does points out that not only are there the occasional white stripes animating the blankness but that several shades of white are plainly on view.
Marc, a locally renowned intellectual (are they Parisians?), won’t have any of it. He’s so shocked at Serge’s foolishness—he can’t accept that a friend of his could be so gullible—that he attacks the 5×4 work adamantly and, when he still doesn’t get through to Serge, resorts to calling it the s-word (which in French would be the m-word).
Their argument reaching higher and higher volume, they’re joined by longtime friend Yvan (Corden), who’s no longer working in the textile industry but has taken a position as a stationery salesman in a business owned by his fiancée’s father. He’s getting married in a few days and nervous about Serge and Marc, who don’t care for the bride-to-be, standing up for him on the impending occasion.
Not on an educated or financial level with Serge or Marc, Yvan is a tolerant guy, reliably acceptable of their contrasting inclinations. When exposed to the canvas in question, he doesn’t particularly care for it but comes around to saying he likes it well enough not to carp.
So, there’s this manosphere set-up, which at its core isn’t so much a treatise on the highs and woes of modern art (Serge accuses Marc of rejecting anything modern) as it is Reza’s small-scale examination of friendships between and among men.
Putting aside that Art is a woman’s view, Reza has structured an intermissionless 90-minute tripart explosion of three men who have been friends for twenty-five years suddenly confronted with paying a bitter farewell to their apparently flimsy bonds.
She divides their potential end into several scenes, the last, longest, and meanest of which has them together for the possible last time and dressing each other down with every sort of jibe they can muster. Yes, they do come to blows (Rick Sordelet, Christian Kelly-Sordelet the fight directors).
The script’s accomplishment is that the more Marc, Serge, and Yvan clash, the more their mutual devotion winks through. As a result, right up to the last line, the audience hopes for a peaceful reunion. (Incidentally, anyone taking in Art as a metaphor for today’s USA manosphere is forgiven.)
Since Reza was initially imagining Frenchmen on edge, American audiences may sense certain Franco/American differences. For instance, Marc alludes to French poet-philosopher Paul Valéry, a name that might not fall so trippingly from an American male’s tongue.
On the other hand, maybe Valéry’s most famous quote, “a poem is never finished, only abandoned” might apply, were the quote actually “a painting is never finished, only abandoned.” Isn’t Marc angling for Serge’s $300,000 buy to be abandoned? Also bear in mind that had an American penned Art, few indigenous men would have been recorded on this lengthy a discussion without bringing up sports.
About the acting: Cannavale’s casting may strike some as unusual: has he ever played an intellectual type before? Nevertheless, he tosses off this tough-minded literary Marc with athletic ease.
Harris, as the out-and-out manifestation of a straight-forward medical man and serious art collector, is perfect in the role. Only once does Serge lose his bearings, suddenly and hilariously jumping up and down in annoyance. Just wait for it.
Corden, already a 2012 Tony winner for One Man, Two Guvnors, has the Tony-impressive role, including a minutes-long tirade about the tribulations of his wedding plans. With it he surely makes Tony-nom hay.
David Rockwell designed the handsome production, which as the friends’ locales switch remains the same three-section, predominantly grey-blue apartment space, so much so that spectators may become briefly confused, scene for scene, as to exactly where they’re supposed to be. But maybe it’s Rockwell astute societal observation that at the end of the disputatious day, the three friends are more alike than not.
Art opened September 16, 2025, at the Music Box Theatre and runs through December 21. Tickets and information: artonbroadway.com
