Art Broadway Reviews

Naturally, Corden makes a meal of that tirade, an increasingly frantic aria about negotiating his family’s demands on his imminent wedding. Corden also makes a meal of a meal in a scene in which he eats olives by hungrily nibbling them one by one, like an oversize squirrel trying to appear polite while devouring his loot in company. Harris and Cannavale don’t fare quite as well, making Ellis’s production feel a little underpowered — though that may change once the actors have more performances under their belts, as this show very much depends on tight chemistry.

Reza, though, doesn’t get into it, apart from making some easy jabs at “conceptual art” and “deconstruction” and the chichi gallery world. These things aren’t legitimate concerns but coat hooks on which to hang generic contention and an overall icky view of human nature — which is why some of the play’s actually funniest stuff, in both writing and performance, occurs in a frantic two-page monologue delivered by Yvan, who hurtles into Serge’s apartment mid-meltdown over complications with his upcoming wedding. Corden makes big, broad, breathless work of the set piece, eventually crash-landing in a chair to well-earned applause. It works because it’s played well but also because it has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Neither does anything else, but at least here, the disregard is genuine.

The three stars appear to be having great fun even when their respective characters are at each other’s throat. It doesn’t matter that Yasmina Reza wrote stick figures rather than characters for her play “Art,” which won the Tony Award for best play back in 1998. She instead sets up a series of premises in which Marc (Bobby Cannavale), Serge (Neil Patrick Harris) and Yvan (James Corden) are able to sound off against each and take sides. Friendship triangles like this one are made so someone feels left out. The current revival of “Art” opened Tuesday at the Music Box, and it is a reminder of how far the theater has traveled since the late 20th Century.

Director Scott Ellis seems to know when to let his talented cast enjoy themselves, and if the pacing in the first half-hour or so feels a bit sluggish, well, that’s mostly on the playwright. The play’s conceits – about modern art, about interpersonal resentments, about something that might nowadays be called toxic masculinity – just don’t seem as novel as they might once have. As Art‘s three buddies set up their impending conflict, we know exactly where they’re heading. This production eventually rewards our patience, even if we sometimes wish for quicker brushstrokes.

Although Art is not especially deep—Reza paints her characters in broad strokes but thin layers—it is solidly built for comedy, and all three men are armed with effective one-liners as their mutual exasperation builds to a climax. With his raspy voice and commanding physical presence, Cannavale is less waspish than the usual Marc, but his bluster hides a core of hurt feelings; this plays nicely off Harris’s self-satisfied but prickly and defensive Serge. It is Corden, however, who dominates the stage and the audience’s affections. In part that’s because of how the part is written—Yvan is more emotional than the others, and Alfred Molina likewise ran off with the original—but it also demonstrates Corden’s enormous comedic talents as a stage actor. The ingratiating quality that can sometimes cloy on television is a perfect match for Yvan’s desperate eagerness to please, and Corden spins it into comic gold.

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.

The three performers mesh together beautifully, with Harris providing just the right haughty snobbishness, Cannavale making comic exasperation into an art form, and Corden so lovable and vulnerable you can almost forget how nasty he can be to waiters in real life. Ellis keeps the proceedings moving like a Swiss watch, the precision of his staging well matched by David Rockwell chic set, Linda Cho’s casually elegant costumes, Jen Schriever’s modernistic lighting design, and Kid Harpoon’s subtle music score.

James Corden was legit hilarious in One Man, Two Guvnors, but that was 13 years ago, before he became a late-night tryhard and the bane of Balthazar. neil patrick harris still has impeccable sitcom timing. Bobby Cannavale has paid his stage dues for years—whether or not he’s right for the part. Is this cast worth half a grand? Is the play? Reza’s 1998 comedy abounds in witty chuckles and elegant structure, but it remains a slight boulevard comedy: three self-obsessed Frenchmen bickering over a pricey painting.

This review isn’t meant to slight Cannavale and Harris: The former is characteristically able to conjure smartest-guy-in-the-room umbrage, as if irritated to even be forced to explain himself, while the latter is at his best when preening over his new investment. (Just under the surface, Harris lets us understand, is a fear that there’s a joke he’s not quite getting.) But it’s Corden, who wraps up his scene of rage pallid and gasping in a manner that somehow doesn’t feel showy and unearned, who’s the standout. When he reaches a point beyond reason, it’s a moment that transforms, first, our sense of what the performer can do and, then, the play itself. Up to Corden’s breakdown, the play’s been in a tradition of talky comedies of manners that stretches from “Seinfeld” back to Wilde and Molière; after it, we’re on more treacherous ground, and, suddenly, anything seems possible. The play itself becomes a blank white space waiting for the actors to color it with something unexpected.

You can only talk art for so long. All three characters eventually crack open, though not, perhaps, to the degree one would hope, as Serge and Marc still rely on abstractions of taste, influence, ideas. It’s when Yvan crumbles, tearfully admitting the significance of these friends in this life, that the production unlocks some prismatic, elusive sentiment, a color noticeably missing from the canvas. Or maybe that’s just my reading, colored by many a frustrating attempt to pull emotions out of a man. Ultimately with any play, just as painting, you supply your own background and see what you see.

French writer Yasmina Reza’s 1998 whine-and-cheese comedy, which opened at the Music Box Theatre on Tuesday night in an askew revival starring Neil Patrick Harris, James Corden and Bobby Cannavale, remains a slim, one-joke, pseudo-intellectual affair that gratingly and exhaustingly works to send up fellow pseudo intellectuals.

The really great thing in this all-star revival (Music Box Theatre, booking to Dec. 21) is those men are played by Bobby Cannavale, Neil Patrick Harris, and James Corden, the latter serving up an early-season comedy masterclass.

On paper, the new Broadway revival of Yasmina Reza’s “Art” sounds like a winner: three Tony Award winners — Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and James Corden — trading barbs in a sleek comedy about male friendship and the value of modern art. The result is hardly terrible, but it is slight. The laughs are modest, the pacing drags, and the play never builds beyond its simple conceit.

With this script and a minimalist staging — every scene takes place in one of the men’s living rooms — Art is entirely reliant on the quality of its cast. Corden is, unsurprisingly, the stand-out: at one point he bursts in and unleashes a rib-cracking five-minute monologue about stepmothers and wedding invitations in which he barely pauses to breathe. Cannavale is a charismatic, flabbergasted straight man with hidden wounds; Harris, at times, felt a bit mannered.

Aside from spoofing the contemporary art world, with its insane valuations based on the throbbing insecurities of people with way too much money, “Art” eventually delves into male friendship and the difficulty men, especially middle-aged dudes, have in actually opening themselves up to their friends. You know, as distinct from joshing and sparring and circling each other like wolves gnawing at vulnerabilities. It had to be a woman to write a play about that. The ace in the hole in Ellis’ revival is Corden, who is just fabulous here. The one-time late-night host doesn’t have the kind of emotional script that made him famous in the British TV show “Gavin & Stacey,” but he doesn’t let that get in his way.

Art has humor, a wonderful cast, and the timeless clash of differing opinions. What’s missing from the script is a clear sense of place and purpose for this friendship. Where did it begin? If a 25-year bond is on the verge of breaking, the audience needs a glimpse of what’s truly at stake.

If $300,000 sounds like a ridiculous price for a monothematic canvas, you’ll side with Marc, played with pitch-perfect exasperation by Bobby Cannavale. If the painting speaks to you, you’ll be with Serge, a flinty, slightly full-of-himself Neil Patrick Harris. If you just want to hang out and not talk about the painting any more, you’ll identify with James Corden’s hapless Yvan.

David Rockwell’s minimalist scenic design in muted grey, punctuated by swift scene changes and Jen Schriever’s equally crisp lighting, nudges Art toward entertaining. However, some may be just as happy watching the famed video of Banskey’s “Girl With Balloon” shredded after it was auctioned in 2018 for $1.4 million—just a bit more than Art made during its first full week of previews.

The play, as translated from its original French by Christopher Hampton, is still good. But sitting through Scott Ellis’ intermittently enjoyable revival at the Music Box, it was clear it needs perfect casting and a razor-sharp directorial vision to justify itself. This first Broadway revival promises luxury and stars; its black-and-white poster has Bobby Cannavale, James Corden and Neil Patrick Harris suited-up and laughing expensively, politely. That frictionless sheen also glazes over their onstage chemistry, however game each of them seem to be.

Impeccable though both performances are, these fine actors almost seem to fade into, um, blank white canvases with a few gray streaks when Mr. Corden bounds or blusters onstage, and sends the comic temperature soaring. This isn’t entirely surprising. The British actor and comic shot to fame (at least in the U.S.) on the strength of a single, dazzling performance in the commedia dell’arte update “One Man, Two Guvnors,” a sensation in London and later on Broadway.