These reviews by Simon Saltzman were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on April 8, 1998. All rights reserved.
The over-praised (or is it over-appraised?) British import "Art," by Yasmina Reza, will undoubtedly find a Broadway audience eager to cheer the middle-aged, middle-class contenders in this 90-minute round of intellectual fisticuffs. The manly art of the bitchy put down achieves world-class status in this clever little conceit of a play in which three word-sparring middle-class men take sides and draw the lines between the value of abstract and figurative art.
However, it's hard for me to be more than mildly impressed with the play's basic premise: that a 15-year friendship between three oddly bonded heterosexuals would come to an abrupt end just because one has purchased a painting for 200,000 francs. Yet there is no denying that the ability of a five-by-four, white-on-white painting by a modernist artist to incite a cataclysmic war of words among men has the making of a very funny picture. Okay, I laughed a little. But this kind of story was funnier in an old one-act play called, "If Men Played Cards as Women do."
It is difficult to embrace a play devoted to little more than polarizing high fallutin' opinions, even when those opinions are so glibly and ingenuously expressed by the three excellent actors Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina. This trio has a ball with their outrageously insignificant, esthetically indefensible characters. And director Matthew Warchus orchestrates the ceaseless babble and reckless brouhaha with a curator's meticulous sense of control. There are those who will undoubtedly be kept amused by how the painting that Marc (Alan Alda), an aeronautical engineer, has smugly and snottily denounced to its purchaser Serge (Garber), a successful dermatologist, as a "piece of shit," would warrant such an outpouring of portentously expressed hostility.
Marc's insensitive assault on his friend's values, first based on the cost of the painting, and then on its arguable worth, sets the play's testy tone. But it is the secondary attacks and counter-attacks, when Serge's personal taste and inferred disloyalty to the condescending and intolerably opinionated Marc is put to the test, that the play begins to percolate. There are moments when the characters are allowed to appear as compassionate, sensitive people, able to feel and be hurt. That is when they are not engaged in making a spectacle of their self-deprecating, self-defeating bitterness.
At first, Marc's ostensibly artistic judgment appears as qualitatively enlightened as it is tiresomely articulated. It is to our great relief that Marc is ultimately challenged, not by the equally pretentious defensive rhetoric from Serge, but by Yvan (Molina), the unwitting, self-absorbed but more neutral arbitrator. As such, he becomes prey to his buddies' ravenous appetite for an unsuspecting scapegoat. The play peaks when Yvan takes a hilariously digressive path from the rage and fury about art that is tearing their friendship apart to tear into a protracted, angst-driven monologue about how his wedding plans have gone haywire.
One can assume that Christopher Hampton's translation loses little of the brittle and acerbic resonance of Reza's text. Alda is scarily convincing as the trio's unofficially ordained mentor. Garber almost steams up the apartment with his dangerously compressed air of independence. And we can all breathe easier when the wonderfully funny Molina smartly assumes the most naive and most direct path to artistic integrity, and by doing so inadvertently creates a possible end to the hostilities.
Designer Mark Thompson's three white-on-white Paris minimalist apartments, where the action inexplicably shifts, are as stunning as they are evocative of these men's fears of an independent esthetic. Not very deep, hardly provocative, and almost too precious for its own good, "Art" is, like a 90-minute stroll through SoHo, good for a few laughs, an occasional gasp, and one -- maybe two -- sighs of pleasure. HH
-- Simon Saltzman
While "Freak" is not my cup of tea, I have to say that its author and solo performer John Leguizamo is a dazzlingly talented entertainer and a terrific actor. But getting through his raucous, riotous, rant-filled, one-man, multi-character stand-up and spill-all dramatic comedy routine called "Freak" can be a trial -- that is if you aren't one of the already initiated. You have to be prepared for the disturbing and frenzied ways that this exuberant mimic, mime, dancer, and story-teller enlivens the most intimate and painful moments of his life. And under David Bar Katz' flexible direction, Leguizamo chooses not to be confined to the limits set by the proscenium arch.
It's hard not to be impressed by such a relentlessly driven talent as Leguizamo exhibits. And when Leguizamo's multi-layered facial and body contortions are set in motion, look out. Whether you've seen his earlier stage outings, "Mambo Mouth" (1991) and "Spic-O-Rama" (1994), in which he demonstrated his uncanny ability to extract the essence and attitudes of multi-racial characters, as seen from the perspective of one passionate insightful Nueva York Latino, or know his excellent film work in "To Wong Foo...," "Romeo and Juliet" (as Tybalt opposite Leonardo DiCaprio), Leguizamo makes an unforgettable impression.
In the case of the redemptive and apparently soul-purifying "Freak," Columbia-born Leguizamo is giving us slices from his life. There's one helluva dysfunctional family exorcised by Leguizamo as he gets off his chest what it meant to grow up poor and instinctively rebellious. His explosive, vengeful narrative places unmerciful emphasis on his punitive father's mistreatment of him, and the unhappy marriage of his parents. That he transforms himself into his macho father "The King of Tenements" as effortlessly as he affects his mother's risibly defensive air of sensuality is awesome. Growing up in Jackson Heights, Queens, Corona, and the Bronx, and the toughening experiences among hostile ethnic types, are generously flecked with some outrageously funny commentary. There is no denying the affection he is now able to express for the Irish and Italians, impersonating them with a reflective accuracy, even in the meanest of encounters.
The only sour notes in Leguizamo's otherwise hot and hip discourse, comes from his being too patently vulgar and sexually explicit. Of course, the under-40s in the audience thought it was just great and cheered him on. His protracted and overly detailed memory about how his father forced him to lose his virginity to a fat old German sexpot in the back of a Kentucky Fried Chicken store is really gross. But the most compelling of the several dozen characters that this feverishly energized young man in black nylon trousers and a Mets tee shirt portrays are family members, including a gay deaf uncle, friends, and, of course, himself. Unlike the recent "Capeman," "Freak" embraces the optimistic heart and the uplifted soul of a Latino. HH
-- Simon Saltzman