The Art of Losing Old Friends
The crowd is reassuringly familiar: mostly late Gen X, the sort of people who appreciate a 90-minute runtime with no interval because we have babysitters to relieve or an early start the next morning. The theatre itself feels a bit cramped, but the sightlines are perfect and the acoustics great. There were no programs due to a printer meltdown—an old school failure in a digital world that felt strangely appropriate for the night ahead.
The play, Yasmina Reza’s comedy of manners, is a sharp analysis of friendship. The premise is simple: Serge, a successful dermatologist played by Damon Herriman, buys a white painting for two hundred thousand. It is white. Entirely white. Perhaps, there are some diagonal white lines. His friend Marc, played by Richard Roxburgh, is horrified.
What follows isn’t really a debate about modern art, but a brutal examination of a fifteen-year friendship. Roxburgh plays Marc as a cynical traditionalist, and frankly, he is annoying from the jump. At first, you might wonder if it’s the acting, but you soon realise he is embodying that specific friend we all may have, the one who feels personally attacked when you try to change or grow. Herriman, meanwhile, is entirely convincing as the friend who has drifted into a world of pretension, desperate to be seen as evolved.
But the real surprise of the evening is Toby Schmitz as Yvan. Caught between the warring friends, Yvan is a neurotic, people-pleasing disaster. While Marc and Serge posture and intellectualize, Yvan brings a frantic realism to the stage that steals the show. The audience’s first genuine applause didn’t come from a high-minded debate; it came after Yvan’s breathless, two-minute monologue about his mother. In that short burst, he conveyed the complexity of human relationships far more effectively than the other two had managed in the forty minutes prior.
The production is staged on a minimal set that shifts slightly to represent different apartments—a simple, effective choice that lets the dialogue do the work. And that dialogue is sharp, delivered in a distinctly Australian way with plenty of swearing and liberal use of the word "mate." This makes the director’s choice to keep the currency in Euros baffling. Hearing three Aussies in Sydney arguing about "two hundred thousand Euros" pulls you right out of the immersion. It’s a French play, sure, but if you’re going to localise the aggression, you might as well localise the bank account. It was a distracting note in an otherwise tight production.
Despite the currency confusion, the play lands its punches. As the ninety minutes race by, you find yourself pondering the uncomfortable questions: Why do we stay friends with people when our lives have drifted in opposite directions? Do we want our friends to grow, or do we just want them to reflect who we used to be?
The villain of the story shifts as the layers peel back, and by the end, you might find yourself sympathizing with the guy who bought the white painting. It is well worth the money and the time.
Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney Season: Now playing until March 8, 2026 Duration: 90 minutes (No interval)