ART
Opening Night: September 16, 2025
Theater: Music Box Theatre
Website: artonbroadway.com
Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris return to the stage in the first Broadway revival of the Tony Award®-winning play ART by Yasmina Reza. Directed by Scott Ellis (Take Me Out, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), this sleek and sophisticated comedy is a strictly limited engagement—17 weeks only. Three longtime friends. One ridiculously expensive painting. Is it art, or is it just the world’s priciest inside joke? As the three men debate the piece and what truly constitutes “art,” they uncover long-held grievances and tension points in their relationships. Can their friendship survive, or will one of them finally draw the line? It’s just 100 minutes of minimalist art, maximalist laughs, and a moving look at what we really see, and forgive, in the people we love.
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September 16, 2025
The play itself, however, is a lot more interesting than a mere star vehicle, and is proving to be remarkably resilient. It’s easy to picture similar arguments about buying NFT art, or a Patek Philippe watch, especially in an era when many people define their identity through purchases and cultural tastes.
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September 16, 2025
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.
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September 16, 2025
Art is as smart a commentary on friendship, identity, and the unspoken expectations that tie them together as it ever was. Sure, it’s wrapped in the veneer of high-brow aesthetic debate, but all that jibber-jabber is just intellectual varnish smoothing over the cracks in three fragile men who feel abandoned by each other.
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September 16, 2025
Corden is reasserting himself as a major theater actor, and his turn as the wobbliest vertex of a friendship triangle would, alone, make the new production of this slippery social satire worth seeing.
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September 16, 2025
The result is a slender but amusing 90-minute evening of Broadway entertainment. Is it art? Maybe not. But why argue?
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September 16, 2025
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.
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September 16, 2025
In this respect, “Art” is a poor man’s “Glengarry Glenross.” Here are plays that are often revived because stars want to appear in them so they can deliver these showy acting-class scenes.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
As both the heart and the court jester for the show, Corden is superb, a perfectly calibrated level of hysterical, sincere and crisp. One blistering monologue sees him ranting, in the voice of three separate characters, for several minutes straight without missing a beat; it was not celebrity compelling the extended applause when he finally collapsed, spent and spittle-covered, into a chair.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
It was hard to know if it was the play or the cast that prevented me from connecting with the characters on a level beyond smug satire.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
The cast’s comedic chops are on full display here. Their reactions to the painting earn plenty of laughs, from Harris’s head-shaking adoration to Cannavale’s up-close skepticism. The three display impeccable timing and physicality.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
If you saw “Art” back in its heyday, you likely forgot the finer points of the plot. It is forgettable. But there is no credible arguing with this level of audience-pleasing success. This very fun revival at least makes the case that forgettability can be an asset and “Art’ enjoyed over and over again.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
Under Scott Ellis’ tight and enthralling direction and with three perfectly cast actors who seem to be having a ball at the Music Box Theatre, “Art” frequently erupts in laughter but still has plenty to say about friendship, power dynamics and how we get on each others’ nerves.
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September 16, 2025
Every word and action is unnatural, like the actors have yardsticks down the backs of their shirts. Much of the stiffness is baked in, of course. Being that the script about snobs was originally French, and has been translated by British writer Christopher Hampton, even affectations have affectations.
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September 16, 2025
It is Yvan’s revelation of one of his pre-nuptial conflicts that Corden serves with full comedic relish—around four minutes of recalled argument, deflated exhaustion, and exaggerated whimpering. It is glorious, and this Broadway season’s first showstopper.
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September 16, 2025
As a director, Ellis is happy to put his trio of stars in the terrarium of a bland upscale apartment and let them go for the punch lines. All three are nimble with comedy, and it’s not that there’s nothing funny in Art; it’s that the material makes the atmosphere in the room too thin to work up the breath for a good laugh.
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September 16, 2025
The humor also feels dated, out of step with contemporary Broadway audiences who expect more depth and urgency. “Art” toys with questions of loyalty, taste, and compromise, but never pushes further. Despite three engaging performances, the show drags until its final minutes. In the end, this revival is less a masterpiece than a blank canvas.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
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.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 16, 2025
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.
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