White Plains CitizeNetReporter - Fort Hill Players Flawless <i>Art</i> at Rochambeau.

WPCNR White Plains Variety. Review by John F. Bailey. October 25, 2002:To put on a great show you have to have good material. The Fort Hill Players knew they had a winning show in the comedy of manners, Art, could they deliver the goods to hardened Broadway skeptics?

THE $200G “ALL-WHITE” CESSARANO: THE LEAD IN ART R. J. D Amato, R. Scott Faubel and Larry Reina as Serge, Marc and Ivan, three upwardly mobile sophisticates react to Serge’s new painting (which is all white), dominates the Fort Hill Players exact replica of the stage set for the Broadway version of Art. The all-white painting, (spotlighted), steals the show as a virtuoso player in its own right. It works its magic on you.
Photo by WPCNR Arts

The exquisitely accurate send-up of male bonding by playwright Yasmina Rez comes to life with the three amateur actors’ flawless cueing and playing to one another, bringing forth shocks, and laughs of recognition as the audience recognizes sides of themselves and friends they know.

WPCNR saw last Friday evening’s performance and we have to say that the exquisitely snooty R. J. D' Amato, the impossibly cynical and judgmental D. Scott Faubel and the nauseatingly obsequious Larry Reina have done a great play “great honors” at Fort Hills Players production, the first Westchester County staging of the 1998 Tony Award-Winning play.

Restricted: Contains “Adult” Language.

Audiences should be warned that the script is seasoned with “realistic” language. The “F” word is used frequently as is the “S-Word.” But the three talented actors and Director Robert Kahn’s seamless timing make the salty syntax work with the script. The writing does not depend on profanity for effect. The 4-letter words, though obtain an eloquence in the elegant way the deftly performing trio deliver these late twentieth century euphemisms that replace more precise words. Every use of the profanity charts new depths of meaning of emotions in these “expletive deleteds.”

Expletives are not gratuitious, because when D. Scott Faubel as Marc in his smug tone describes Serge’s new painting as “S,” for the first time you know exactly what he really means, his precise staccato “t” at the end, drips with disdain.

All about the Ensemble

What makes Art tough on the actors is there is no intermission. The show runs one hour and 30 minutes, demands terrific bonding and attention on the part of the actors, when all three are on the stage, and the men of Art were up to the challenge. Robert Kahn, who directed the show, had his actors spend much time together bonding emotionally off-stage as well as on, and it showed in how hard and how well the show simply flowed between the three men

D Amato the elegant sophisticate to Faubel’s existential rebel, who take care of Ivan

The premise of Art is to explore the tenuous perceptions and mutual needs that bond men (and perhaps women, too). D’Amato’s tall, aesthetic Serge is very smug at having acquired a “Cessarano” for $200,000. Marc punctures this smugness and sophistication of Serge by expressing incredulity at the purchase of a “white” painting in the most belittling way, like some witheringly superior talk show host, pricking Serge’s confidence and sensibilities. As Serge extols the “confluence” of white lines he thinks he sees in the painting, Marc takes the audience into his confidence with marvelous stares of disbelief.

Serge and Marc’s posturings and reactions to each other’s sudden lack of confidence in what they have always come to expect from each other deteriates, the two actors satirize conversations about sports, politics, taste, finance that menfriends have every day. D’Amato delivers petulant hurt at an ever-increasing (and funny sequence) as he tries to explain his purchase to his friend Marc whom he has always shown off as one of his outrageous friends, only Serge is hurt now that Marc has turned his withering judgmental tendencies on him. Yes, we know that is a complex sentence, but this is a complex play that captures the protocol of male social interaction and its unspoken boundaries precisely. Men will laugh at this play, women will learn.

Ivan the Jester

Larry Reina as Yvan plays it slightly over the top as the eternally effeminiate male, alarmed at how angry his two friends are at each other. When he pleases neither with his reactions designed to appease both, the two gang up on him.

The emotional bonding that Kahn said his three actors achieved before playing their parts, WPCNR believes enabled them to pursue the twisted pathways of male protocols of behavior that show what happens when friends do not fulfill the roles we have always depended upon them to play. As Kahn put it after the performance, Ivan is the “fulcrum” of the trio, when Serge is up, Marc is down, and vice-versa, and Ivan keeps them in balance by Serge and Marc having to be supportive of Ivan.

Reaching you with the emotions of a friendship falling apart.

D. Scott Faubel is relentless as Marc, long the attacker who gains satisfaction of having his cynicism appreciated, only to find he is just as hurt when something he believes in is challenged. He and Serge come to blows when Serge, totally ripped that Marc hates his painting complains about the way Marc’s girlfriend waves her hand at cigarette smoke. This is a scene that tellingly and with great “yucks” shows how when we are really mad at someone we can seize on any small item to irritate us. (Any old flaw will do.)

Reina’s pitifully needy Ivan reaches the audience with his alarmed pleading for the two to show some reason (he does not want to lose them as friends.) It’s at this point that the demands of friendship, the point of the play, in WPCNR’s opinion, comfortingly wash over the audience like a caressing Caribbean wave.

Intellectuals watch it!

Along the way to Art’s crisis point, the audience enjoys some witty satire of typical preconceived notions, art analysis, and stereotyped fixtures of the Sotheby-Parke Benet set from psychiatrists to dentists. D’Amato and Faubel’s superb conversational diction lampoons sophisticated banter so they are not only understandable, but natural, too. It reminds me of those Hamptons sundeck conversations with New Yorker readers at sunset, or on an East 83rd street balcony trying to impress a good-looking woman not married to you.

Reina playing the unsophisticated Ivan who perhaps has more reason than either of his superior friends, quietly displays that strength through sacrifice of pride (like a good wife) that eventually brings his two friends to a happy ending, and preserves what he needs: his friends. Reina though not totally the image of the part, too aging a flower child in corduroys for this, I thought, but that is quibbling. He occasionally overmodulated but perhaps that is more real for a crisis of friendship.

Reina’s Ivan is the most difficult part, so easy to overact, but ultimately he hit just-the-right note of pathos, mixed with reason and projection of the alternative to breaking up the friends brings the “odd trio” to higher ground. Reina a lawyer by trade is in the right part. D’Amato and Faubel have all the great lines, but Reina had to carry enough vulnerability to bring the two alpha males to their senses.

Moments to remember in theater

You will love the ultimate act of trust that Serge offers to Marc to close the argument over the painting and knits up the tattered fabric of their long friendship (It is completely silent and involves a magic marker that he offers Faubel to alter the painting.) D’Amato and Faubel get this absolutely right. The silence, the mutual acknowledgement of trust of giving in, giving responsibility is superbly acted.

The last lines sent the audience home with hopefully new perspectives on friendship:

“If I’m who I am because I’m who I am and if you’re who you are because you’re who you are, then I’m who I am and you’re who you are.”

“If , on the other hand, I’m who I am because you’re who you are and if you’re who you are because I’m who I am, then I’m not who I am and you’re not who you are.”

Simple. It’s a man thing, and perhaps a woman thing, too. See Art the way “The Odd Trio” of D’Amato, Faubel and Reina deliver it and you’ll understand.

The Fort Hill Players production is directed by Robert Kahn. Set design, tastefully and strikingly executed by Anthony Fabrizio and Joan Charischak. The just-the-right shade of lighting was created by David Ullman, and executed subtlely with deft hand by Light Board Operator Nancy Weiss. Terry Hanson colorcoordinated actors wardrobes and swathed the onstage chairs in their "distinguishing hues of white."

Next production coming up is Charlotte's Web for children, a free performance on November 10 at 2 PM at the White Plains Library.

Note: The live stage video of the Fort Hill Players production of Art may be purchased for $30 by calling 761-5620


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