WHAT is the value of art? We could debate that all day and all of the night, and friendships would fray, just as they do in Yasmina Reza's global hit, the punchy Parisian comedy Art.

French films would have you believe that our neighbours across the Channel divide sit around the perfect dinner table philosophising endlessly on the great topics of our time, arguing the toss over anything and everything in a Gauloise fog.

What separates Art from cinema stereotype is that the deconstruction and dissection of art is not conducted with dazzling intellect. Instead the three protagonists get up close and very personal, ending up questioning the very roots of their 15-year association. They don't indulge in navel gazing; they go for the jugular and the solar plexus, all the more so in Simon Shepherd's directorial debut production.

The spark for 75 increasingly pugilistic minutes is the expensive purchase of a modish white painting with undetectable white lines by Shepherd's suave dermatologist, Serge, to complement his pristine white, minimalist apartment. His cynical, new-style intellectual friend, aeronautical engineer Marc (Russell Boulter, formerly on The Bill beat), mocks the painting and price alike and feels dyspeptic discomfort at the implications of Serge's loss of judgement.

Hangdog mutual friend Yvan (Michael Garner), six years in therapy, plays the Swiss role, ever neutral as he tries to steer a path of non-conflict, only to end up upsetting both men.

Rather than the rotating doors of French farce, the friends sit and fry in the manner of Osborne and Ayckbourn, Miller and Williams, all the more so in Christopher Hampton's adaptation, in Reza's study of surface and depth, shallow value and true worth in life and art.

The heat always rises in Art, but even though the suit jackets don't come off, Shepherd's Art reaches sauna temperatures more quickly than in past productions. The result is a less mischievous tone, replaced by more hurtful and cruel character assassinations, in which Shepherd's chilled Serge grows irascible, Boulter's pill-taking Marc blows a gasket and Garner's Yvan is shelled and mortared. Yvan's celebrated rant scene no longer stands out, but this Vesuvius version certainly gets to the Art of the matter.

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Updated: 11:25 Wednesday, May 25, 2005