Art

Marc, Serge and Yvan are three cultured, intelligent men. They have been close friends for years and believe that their mutual understanding is so deep that each can anticipate the other's every move. But when Serge impulsively blows a small fortune on a large white painting with diagonal white lines, the truculent Marc takes a decidedly dim view. To his eye, nurtured on the lushness of the Dutch Old Masters and the Florentine Renaissance, this heap of junk is no more than a con trick by a passingly fashionable contemporary artist. Yvan, ever anxious to please, tries to jolly things along by trying terribly hard to see other colours, other forms amid the unbroken whiteness. But nobody is convinced.

Barry Foster as Marc, Nigel Havers as Serge and Roger Lloyd Pack as Yvan are a wonderfully close-knit trio, cruising elegantly through the swirling vortex of argument and counterargument in Yasmina Reza's almost balletic script. Christopher Hampton's English translation is witty, wounding and wonderfully uplifting, though it is debatable whether, in its original French, this play, which goes to the very roots of friendship, might have been a darker affair altogether.

Still, propelled by Matthew Warchus's laser-sharp direction and in the clinical, echoing vastness of Mark Thompson's gallery-like set, it is nothing but pure pleasure to bask in the uninterrupted perfection of this hugely successful production, which ends with its three characters sitting quietly, bathed in the inseparable primary colours, which together constitute pure, unrelenting white.

At the Belfast Grand Opera House until Saturday April 7th with matinees on Thursday and Saturday. Booking at the Ticket Shop on Belfast 90241919.