Cult play ART gets an Eastbourne revival
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
He trusted in the judgement of a friend of his who is also one of the producers and who was urging him to go for it. What he has since discovered is a “really, really good play.”
The tour brings him and it to Eastbourne's Devonshire Park Theatre from Tuesday, October 1-Saturday, October 5. Aden (The Crown, The House of Elliot) is joined on stage in the three-hander by award-winning comedian Seann Walsh and by Chris Harper (Call the Midwife, Coronation Street), directed by Iqbal Khan, a play in which the seemingly simple purchase of contemporary art – an all-white painting – ignites a hilarious debate amongst three close friends. What begins as a light-hearted discussion about art quickly descends into a riotous exploration of the blurred lines between art and reality.
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Hide Ad“We are doing the first production in England that is not based on the very first production. All the rest of them have been based on that one but this is a remounting and a redirecting. It is a complete rethink about the play. The original was an all-white background but we have made it with a lot more colours and gone for a really ingenious design and the only thing you see that is white is the painting. I think if you're going to try to show off the controversial white painting it seems perverse to have had an all-white background.


“But I knew nothing about the play. I hadn't even read it when I accepted the part. There was a very embarrassing interview when I came to do a photo session and people were asking me what I thought of the play and I had to say I didn't have a clue and I didn't even know what part I was playing. But a friend of mine is a producer and he just insisted that I do it.”
As for the play: “I could give all the usual actors’ schtick and say it's sexy and funny and wonderful and marvellous, but actually it really is funny and actually it is really funny and also rather sad. It's both those things. There are not many really, really good plays around and this is certainly a really, really good play. How much of that is down to it being Christopher Hampton's adaptation I don't know but you do get the feeling that there's quite a lot of Christopher Hampton in here, and we do also have a very, very brilliant director. I don't think anyone will be in any doubt what it's all about when they see it.
“It is certainly about art and it is also about friendship but it's also about how you maintain friendship and the things that we have to tolerate in order to be able to maintain friendship. And I think that's what the painting exposes, the fault lines in the friendship... which makes it sound a bit worthy but as I say it's just really, really funny. By the end of my first line the audience are laughing and that's not a tribute to my genius as an actor!”
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Hide AdAs for Aden’s character, Marc, he thinks the piece of art is absurd: “He is traditionally the stern one that does not like the painting. It's just a white painting and you think of what Serge has paid for it, but I do think that perhaps by the end you will have rather more sympathy for Serge!”