Last night, Rich and I went to see the latest offering over at Signature. It's called Art and its billed as a comedy - which it is, although maybe in the mysterious tradition which allowed the French to find Jerry Lewis funny.
No, that comment was too harsh. It was better than that, but carried a little 'spoonful of sugar' quality, in that the playwrite, Yasmina Reza, used humor to mask her introduction of serious ideas. She made me laugh while smuggling in concepts that left me unable to fall back to sleep at 3:00 AM. Reza is French - of Iranian and Hungarian parents. (Wonder what her families dinner tables were like?)
Ostensibly, Art relates the tale of Marc, Serge and Yvon, three middle-aged French men, living in a metropolitan area (likely Paris, but never specified) and the rather spectacular conflict they share over a piece of art. But actually, the play is about friendship. Why we choose the friends we do and vice versa, what they mean to us and vice versa and whether they have value or meaning outside of the context of our lives.
(This not in an absolute sense, as in every man endowed by his creator with certain inalienable rights, but in the subjective, knowable sense. Think that old chestnut about whether that tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is there to hear it. Do our friends have value in our lives if we have lost so much contact that we no longer recognize each other? How much do our freinds define us and how much should be we let them?)
Serge's purchase, at the princely sum of 200,000 Francs of a five foot by four foot canvas with what appears to be a white background upon which may or may not be painted a series of white diagonal lines is what sparks all this.
Marc is an extremely linnear thinker who prides himself on being something of a maverick and an eccentric and could likely carry the label of a 'cultural conservative" today - though nothing in the play is explictly political. He simply cannot understand or accept that Serge might actually like a piece of art which, in Marc eyes, seems at best an example of art fraud and at worst "a piece of shit." Serge's purchase and delight with this painting crystalizes for Mark the way he feels Serge has become a different man than the one he has known for 15 years - and what he percieves as a loss hurts and grieves him.
Serge, on the other hand, has contracted, somwhat, the virus of cultural snobbery and feels rejected in Marc's mockery of the painting and his inability to at least be happy that he is happy with the purchase.
Yvon spends the play trying to mediate between the two until it becomes very clear that neither of the other two have been real friends to him. Yvon, in many ways, is the most human and humane character in the play - consistantly bringing the other two back from whatever intellectual battlefield they share to the nuts and bolts of living.
So - no spoilers here for those who want to see it. Just the questions it left with me. How much does any of us know about why we chose our friends or they chose us? It's axiomatic that no one is perfect so we all have to tolerate some degree of imperfection in our friends as they must with us. But who sets the balance that says we will accept just this much of so-and-so's specific behavior or attitude, but no more? And does that balance change over time? And if it is changing, do we owe our friends and ourselves the chance of fix it or renegotiate it?
I can think of several long term and deep friendships in my life and the lives of friends and family which have died. Some of the friendships died slowly and almost like the two parties had each placed a do not resucisitate sign at the end of the patient's bed. But two or three them died precepitously - in ways that, when I look back on them, suggests they had filled with dry rot over time much like a tree will so that when the really strong wind came they could not take it and instead collapsed.
I think friendships have to be renegotiated over time. People change - and we change our friends as they change us - and sometimes only then break off friendship. Some of these things are almost stereotypes. Two alcoholics who support each other in deep friendship as they begin to live sober - only to find that really don't get along as well sober as they did while they drank. I guess what I came away with was a deeper appreciation of my friends and a willingness to do the work to nurture and grow them. The lessons that I guess Marc and Serge forgot and had to re-learn....
