When Friendship Gets Abstract: Art Paints a New Picture at The Off-Central
By Avery Anderson | The Arts Passport
There’s nothing simple about a white painting. Especially when it costs a fortune and ruins your friendships.
In Art — Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning comedy about ego, taste, and emotional combustion — one friend’s purchase of an all-white canvas sends three others into philosophical meltdown. The play is about art in the same way Thanksgiving dinner is about turkey: technically true, but really it’s about who throws the first fork.
This month, St. Pete’s The Off-Central Players are staging Art with an all-female cast, just as Broadway gears up for its own revival starring (checks notes) three men. Somewhere, James Corden is probably warming up his “I’m just like you, but louder” face, and Tampa Bay audiences get the vastly superior alternative.
Director and designer Alan Mohney Jr. insists this isn’t a gimmick.
“This isn’t just a gender swap,” he said in the show’s announcement. “It’s a deeper look at how we as humans navigate conflict, criticism, and connection. The result is funny, surprising, and at times, unflinchingly honest.”
And, he adds:
“True friendship itself is the real masterpiece.”
Friendship, but make it petty
Around a rehearsal table, actors Ami Sallee (Seline), Debbie Yones (Yvonne), and Vera Samuels (Margot) keep finishing each other’s sentences — and sometimes stealing them.
“It’s a play about friendship,” Sallee said. “Art is the vehicle — the catalyst — for the play about friendship. It’s not really about the painting at all.”
Recasting the trio as women shifts everything, she added. “Three men are going to fight a way that’s different than how women fight,” Yones said. “We’re still true to the script, but it evolves differently.”
Sallee jumped in: “There are moments that just don’t feel right to be among women in the same way — lines that land differently. But finding those nuances, how female friends communicate and handle conflict, that’s been really interesting.”
Lost in translation (and trauma bonding)
The three laugh about how hard Reza’s dialogue is to say. “It’s translated from French, written in 1996,” Samuels said. “So there are just too many words. You read it and go, ‘Who talks like this?’”
“It’s a little trauma bonding,” Yones added. “We’re in the boat together — learning the words, the rhythms, the logic of it. You look at each other like, ‘How are we going to do this?’ but also, ‘We are going to do this.’”
A mirror for 2025 friendships
Sallee sees the play’s tension as painfully current. “The person you thought you knew starts saying things you can’t comprehend,” she said. “It’s universal. Friendships are heated right now — political opinions, personal values — and people you love are suddenly on the other side of something.”
Yones, who’s been deep in her character’s closing monologue, found an unexpected thesis:
“There’s a line that says nothing beautiful, nothing good ever comes from rational argument,” she said. “Friendship and love come from an irrational place — and trying to navigate them logically never works.”
Samuels nodded: “Relationships need work. You can’t just sit back and expect they’ll always be there. Things change.”
The pre-Thanksgiving show we deserve
As for timing? Sallee offers a theory only slightly tongue-in-cheek.
“Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, people go home and reconnect with all their dysfunctional friendships,” she said. “We close right before the ‘pretend you love everybody’ holiday. So maybe we’re the example of what not to do.”
If Broadway’s version ends with a polite golf clap, Art at The Off-Central ends with a mirror. It’s less about what’s hanging on the wall and more about who’s standing next to you, still arguing about it.
Art runs Nov. 13–23 at The Off-Central Players, 2260 1st Ave N., St. Petersburg.
Tickets $20–$36 | theoffcentral.com Pay-What-You-Can Night: Wed., Nov. 19
Avery Anderson
Avery Anderson