I’ve been reading – a little ruefully, I admit – a lot of newspaper columns of late about the crisis in male friendship. Seems we’re in the grip of a “Friendship Recession”, in which middle-aged men are finding themselves increasingly isolated, more and more often alone.

After sitting down with Art, Yasmina Reza’s star-magnet, all-male three-hander, I find myself oddly OK with that. With friends like these … who needs friends?

Damon Herriman, Toby Schmitz and Richard Roxburgh in Art. Photo © Brett Boardman

Art is essentially a comedy of manners between longtime friends, sparked when one of them – wealthy dermatologist Serge – invites his pal Marc to view his latest acquisition: an all-white painting by a celebrated Minimalist. Marc, very much into the classics, can’t help but burst into derisive laughter. 160,000 euros? For a piece of “shit”?

Serge is stung. Marc cannot back down. They draw another friend, the hapless Yvan, into the spat, each hoping he will take their side. But Yvan, about to be married and wilting in a new job he hates, has more pressing worries.

Art has always been a star vehicle, and this production, directed by Lee Lewis, sticks to the formula: Richard Roxburgh is Marc, Damon Herriman is Serge, and Toby Schmitz is Yvan (stepping into rehearsals after the departure of Ryan Corr). All, as you might reasonably expect, perform masterfully in a work whose subsurface intellectualism creates the impression of a comedy created behind glass. There’s something Sartrean about it. Art as a kind of No Exit for our post-social times, anyone?

Damon Herriman, Richard Roxburgh and Toby Schmitz in Art. Photo © Brett Boardman

Lewis has fine instincts for what works on a large stage. The performances are scaled to the room, and each actor makes strong, logical physical choices: Roxburgh, wearing classic Boomer/Gen X black leather, aggressively occupies the space.

Herriman – contrastingly immaculate in creamy tailored suits and shirts – looks fragile despite the certainty of his pronouncements – even a touch prissy.

Schmitz, dressed in slobby armchair sports-fan gear, plays Yvan with loose ankles and wrists. Yvan’s entrance – in which he’s also searching for the missing top to a felt pen – is priceless. Ditto a breathless speech in which he spills his marital and career woes.

The play’s setting remains Paris (the text is translated from the French by Christopher Hampton), but the accents are local. Roxburgh’s Marc feels familiarly Australian, his behaviour rooted in tall-poppy-cutting instinct. Reza’s side-glance observations on class, however, still strike as unmistakably French.

Richard Roxburgh and Toby Schmitz in Art. Photo © Brett Boardman

It’s a fairly short show – 90 minutes, played straight through – and it fizzes hard for at least half of that. From about the midway point, the interactions start to feel repetitive, however, and the audience finds itself relying more on the production’s isolated bursts of comic brilliance (Herriman’s suddenly shrieking Serge; Schmitz’s Yvan crumpling after an accidental blow to the head) than on sustained invention in the script.

All in all, though, as a piece of star-driven commercial theatre with audience satisfaction as its primary goal, this production of Art knows exactly what it is and how to deliver all that with precision. Whether it restores your faith in friendship is a matter for you alone.

ART plays at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, 10 February – 1 March; Playhouse, QPAC, Brisbane, 11–22 March; Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, 22 April – 3 May; Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 20–24 May.