‘Art’ gives surface treatment to deep questions

In some ways, that’s OK. Henry Wishcamper directs the able cast skillfully, with many nice bits of characterization fleshing out Reza’s deliberately blank slates: Although her script reveals few facts about the three men besides first name, profession, and marital status, Bryan Avers, Michael Countryman, and David Garrison create distinctive personalities from the scarce data they’re given.

Garrison plays Serge, the well-off dermatologist who ignites a furious debate by paying 200,000 francs (the play is set in the pre-euro Paris of 1994) for a painting by the fictional artist Antrios — a painting that Serge insists contains many subtle shades, though his friend Marc (Countryman), an aeronautical engineer, sees only a 4-foot-by-5-foot canvas painted white, with diagonal lines, also white, barely discernible on its surface. A third friend, Yvan (Avers), who’s a textile expert turned stationery salesman and about to be married, seems not quite sure which side of the argument he’s on.

That, as it turns out, is the real crux of the play. Despite its title, “Art’’ is not so much about art as it is about friendship, and specifically male friendship of the competitive, insecure, and often passively hostile sort. Marc, we gradually gather, has served as a kind of intellectual mentor to Serge and is now enraged by his friend’s embrace of an art movement he sees as vacuous and false; Serge has admired Marc but is chafing under his air of superiority, and Yvan looks up to both of them while secretly feeling inferior (and therefore, of course, resentful, too).