Art
★★★★☆ Thought-provoking
Bedlam: Wed 25 – Sat 28 Mar 2026
Review by Ruth Bennett
The EUTC’s production of Art, at the Bedlam until Saturday, is compelling. It largely succeeds in navigating the many pitfalls hidden in the ostensibly straightforward, Tony Award-winning script.
The taut play by Yasmina Reza comprises two interlocking triangles. The first is the tension among its three protagonists. The second is the weighting among the play’s ideas, emotion, and humour. The slenderness of the script magnifies any misalignment among these elements and, while EUTC haven’t struck the balance perfectly here, they come laudably close.
Rufus Goodman and Reuben Stickland. Pic: Marla MacCallum Hall.
Art is superficially about, well, art. Dermatologist Serge (Reuben Stickland) has spent a great deal of money on an abstract painting, and his friend Marc (Rufus Goodman), an aeronautical engineer, thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous. Meanwhile, their mutual friend Yvan (Dan Solomon), newly in the stationery business and about to get married, just wants everyone to get along.
Under the surface, the play is less about art history than it is about artifice: how much truth can (male) friendships bear? As Yvan’s marriage-planning woes mount and Serge’s anger collides with Marc’s control issues, themes of dominance and conciliation overshadow ruminations on aesthetics.
In some ways, the play, which premiered in its original French in 1994, just misses being truly contemporary. The strands of the script that deal with art are rooted in the last gasps of pre-internet postmodernism, before it was hollowed out by digital nihilism and irony poisoning. The play’s abundant breaking of the fourth wall, which it does well, was a far more conspicuous achievement before TV shows like Modern Family made the practice mundane.
intriguing rather than alienating
Director Arthur Siri Heath has wisely opted not to emphasise these somewhat outmoded intellectual threads. The decision to present what is unequivocally not a naturalistic script in a naturalistic way is also a good one, diluting the inherent staginess to a level that is intriguing rather than alienating.
Lily-Beau Wolton’s evocative three-part set works harmoniously with the director’s vision. She subtly and efficiently cues the distinctive personalities of each of the friends.
Reuben Stickland and Dan Solomon. Pic: Marla MacCallum Hall.
Stickland, Goodman, and Solomon are all highly skilled, and deftly individuate their characters. In a script that assigns each role a philosophical position, they ably steer well-clear of the traps of archetype.
Goodman captures the jaded, middle-aged Marc with tremendous credibility, drawing on tics and an embodied rumpled-ness. Befitting his character, it’s a fine-tuned and precisely-controlled performance, with silences spooling out into discomfort to heighten hilarity.
As the socially ambitious art-buyer Serge, Stickland convincingly presents a complex man who is both proud and insecure. His subterranean anger is integrated into his persona and fully, frighteningly, plausible.
an extraordinary mania
Solomon, as Yvan, has the most difficult job of suspending disbelief over his obvious youth, and is somewhat unbalanced in this by the success of Stickland, and, especially, Goodman. He leans into the neuroses of his character with an extraordinary mania and freneticism that garners laughs, especially in his centrepiece monologue.
With energy that’s always dialled up to ten, however, there’s little room to grow in scenes that require an extra punch. Solomon’s touching speech near the end displays Yvan’s vulnerability, and is well-delivered in a different voice, but comes too late to add nuanced colour to a character who up to that point feels a little monochromatic.
Reuben Stickland and Rufus Goodman. Pic: Marla MacCallum Hall.
Though Solomon leads the pack in rapid-fire delivery, the actors share a tendency to signal passion with pace, at the expense of comprehensibility and impact.
These minor flaws rub against the knottier challenge of overcoming the play’s lack of an obvious through-line. De-emphasising the intellectual and boosting the comedic are both astute decisions, but they’re of little help against this hurdle. A stronger emotional element is required to carry things along.
unreconstructed
It’s also needed to avoid raising a question more unfathomable than the nature of art: why the heck are these three rather unpleasant, unreconstructed (all women are off-stage and reviled), horn-locking men even friends? The script leaves it to the company to fill in a sense of these men’s bonds. Without this crucial jigsaw piece, not only is some of the sustaining tension missing, but the climactic moment of action is under-motivated.
Although the emotional force needed to make this piece propulsive isn’t quite there, the length of the play limits the extent of the problem. EUTC deliver a smart take on a difficult script and delineate Reza’s brambly, disquieting words in a thoughtful and satisfying way.
Running time: One hour and 10 minutes (with no interval)
Bedlam Theatre, 11B Bristo Place, EH1 1EZ.
Wednesday 25 – Saturday 28 March 2026
Evenings: 7.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
