The current offering at the Theatre Royal has that rarest of sights, a group of men talking about relationships, with ne’re a nudge or a prompt by a woman and, just as miraculously, neither in a pub, bar or even around a dining table.

Under the guise of talking about something highfalutin’ and intellectual like ‘art’, the writer, Yasmina Reza (translator, Christopher Hampton) leads us, as subtly as you like and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, into the terra incognita of male friendships. The plot itself is a simple one: one of a group of three friends lays out and eye watering wedge for a painting that looks pretty much like the unadulterated canvas on which it has been applied. This act of apparent lunacy leads the three chums into the world of the usually unsaid.

The inevitable sniggering and uncomprehending gawping soon takes us into questions of motives. Is it an act of self-deluded folly, self-opinionated arrogance, a crie de cœur of identity or simply bravado? An analogy for the ensuing tensions and bickering might be if one of a group of, say, three Spurs supporters out of the blue announced he was transferring his allegiance to Arsenal. There would inevitably be a sense of confusion and betrayal; the unwritten, unspoken bonds that help define the relationship would be sorely tested; questions would be asked, fingers pointed.

It would (for a British audience at least) be difficult to make the fallout anything other than a comedy and there are certainly enough laughs to mask the taste of the playwright’s medicine, which slips down in the most agreeable manner. It also helps that modern art comes in for a little mild kicking although, happily, none of the characters are let loose in that field for too long. The problems arise not so much from what is said as how it is said, bearing in mind these are ‘besties’ with sensibilities which, it turns out, are easily bruised.

After the surprising consequences from this one, apparently simple, act have been put through the wringer the would-be art lover, Serge (Nigel Havers) makes the ultimate sacrifice to friendship by offering to let Marc (Denis Lawson) deface the offending artwork. At the end of the play friendship is restored and the chums are all the wiser, each knowing a little more about the others.

From its first English run some twenty years ago the play has attracted strong casts; each character is allowed to run the gamut from indignation to pathos with a good dose of self-indulgent anger and self-pity on offer. The present cast of well-seasoned and likeable favourites, Messrs. Tompkinson, Havers and Lawson all rise to the challenge with nicely delineated characters.

Mark Thompson’s spare and elegant set gives a hint of Parisian sophistication, but other than that there is little to suggest we are anywhere other than our own shores so it came as a little surprise to learn via the odd remark that we were not.

I did wonder at one point if I was reading too much into the play by seeing the subtleties of the painting as being a metaphor for the subtle currents in the three-way relationship, for ultimately the play succeeds by managing to appear arty without being esoteric with no small thanks to director, Ellie Jones keeping things clear and well paced. All in all this is a confident, sophisticated and entertaining crowd pleaser that would not have been out of place in the Ustinov.    ★★★★☆     Graham Wyles      8^th May 2018