I went into the play Art knowing almost nothing about it beyond the shorthand description: three men argue about a painting. That turns out to be wildly insufficient. The painting — an expensive, almost completely white canvas — is really just the spark. What burns underneath is friendship, ego, and the strange, delicate business of telling the truth to people you care about.
The play circles around a question most friendships eventually face: how honest are you actually supposed to be? Marc believes in blunt truth. Serge wants his taste and choices respected. Yvan, stuck somewhere in the middle, tries to keep the peace until the effort nearly splits him in half. Watching that triangle tighten over the course of the night is uncomfortable in the best possible way. You recognise the dynamic immediately. Everyone has been one of these people at some point.
The production at QPAC’s Playhouse Theatre leans fully into the human mess of it all, and the result is electric.
Richard Roxburgh’s Marc carries a kind of controlled irritation that feels permanently on the verge of boiling over. Damon Herriman gives Serge a brittle pride that makes perfect sense once you see how personally he takes the criticism of the painting. Then there’s Toby Schmitz as Yvan, who spends much of the play trying to smooth things over with increasing desperation. And the longer the play goes on, the clearer it becomes that Yvan is barely holding things together outside this argument as well. He drops hints about the chaos in his personal life, little cracks that show through the surface. What makes it quietly painful is how little Marc and Serge seem to notice. They’re so wrapped up in their own grievances that Yvan’s attempts to reach out pass them by. By the time his spiralling monologue about wedding stationery arrives — one of the biggest laughs of the night — it also carries a sense of someone finally buckling under pressure.
All three performances feel precise without feeling mechanical. You get the sense the actors know exactly where every beat lands, but nothing about it feels stiff.
What struck me most was the physical storytelling. The blocking and movement constantly reshape the emotional balance of the scene. A character standing instead of sitting, crossing the stage at the wrong moment, or lingering just a bit too long near the painting suddenly changes who holds the power. More than once I found myself wondering how much of that detail lived in Yasmina Reza’s script, how much came from the director, and how much the actors discovered together in rehearsal.
Silence does a lot of work here too.
There’s a stretch where the three men simply sit around eating olives. No dialogue, just the quiet, yet fervent business of snacking. It goes on long enough that the audience starts to laugh, softly at first. Then the laughter spreads across the room in waves, growing louder, fading, bubbling up again as the actors keep calmly eating. It’s such a small, mundane action, yet the timing within the context of the argument that is unfolding on stage is so exact you can feel the performers gently steering the entire theatre through it.
That kind of control over an audience is rare.
And the audience was right there with them all night. Big, rolling laughter when the arguments tipped into absurdity. Moments of genuine stillness when the characters hit something raw.
By the end, the painting almost doesn’t matter anymore. What stays with you is the uncomfortable recognition of how friendships survive disagreement — or don’t. How easily honesty can slide into cruelty. How pretending everything is fine can slowly hollow a relationship out.
You know a play has done its job when it keeps rattling around your head days later. I left the theatre still turning over certain lines, certain looks between the characters. I even caught myself wondering what I would have said about the painting.
I’d absolutely go back just to watch that argument unfold again.
WHAT: Art by Yasmin Reza
WHEN: Until March 22, 2026.
WHERE: Playhouse Theatre QPAC
TICKETS: Get your tickets to see Art here.
In her spare time, she likes long walks down the makeup aisle and performing in Brisbane theatre. You can follow her adventures on Instagram and TikTok @thebeautypalate.
