Friend Art NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (62)
See it if you have friends whose art you are obliged to support whether or not it's any good.
Don't see it if overly self-involved characters are a turn-off for you.
See it if you enjoy well developed characters and good actors
Don't see it if you dislike contemporary light drama
See it if It presents a real-life situation re: Paintings, Music and Performances. How does one react to a pal's work?
Don't see it if you have pals in the show and will not know how to react to their work
See it if funny, friendship, relationships
Don't see it if banal, obvious,
See it if Entertaining fluff. Ridicules the performance art scene and the folks who populate it.
Don't see it if We've seen it before; it says nothing new. The romance story doesn't add much. The performance art scenes were really bad.
See it if inscrutable relationships between quirky people interest you.
Don't see it if you want to care about characters or their lives. Felt like friend art to me. I just didn't get it and took nothing away with me.
See it if you have been dragged to see friend's performance pieces and been forced to render an opinion. Relationships felt forced. Acting was weak
Don't see it if you want an engrossing show.
See it if You are under 35. You enjoy pretentious empty shows. You like a plot that includes drugs. You don't mind loud bad music.
Don't see it if You are looking for an evening of thought-provoking theatre. You are over 35 years old.You enjoy recommending a show to other theatre goers.
Critic Reviews (6)
"An insightful comedy-drama...Your affection for 'Friend Art', may depend upon how much interest you have in listening to people in their 30s worry over their not exactly momentous problems. At times, 'Friend Art' comes close to feeling like, um, friend art — of interest primarily to people who may not actually be friends with the show’s creators and performers, but know a lot of people like them. But the play has enough biting, aware humor to move us past the navel-gazing aspects."
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"A queasy little play with an attention-span problem...There's very little material here, since neither the imperiled relationship nor the actual art-making much interests the playwright...There may be no way to portray these characters realistically, nor is there much that director Portia Krieger could have done to help...But the weight on all the actors is great indeed. You feel bad for them. I hope their friends don't come."
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“You won't struggle to find complimentary things to say about this very funny, almost painfully astute play that is sure to resonate uncomfortably with a certain subset of New Yorkers...While the dialogue is very funny, it begins to wear thin in the second half...The play has difficulty landing and its end feels quite abrupt. Despite this shagginess, Alvarez intelligently hits upon a larger angst shared by more than just a few failed artists in Brooklyn.”
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"Alvarez seems determined to prove her thesis correct by crafting a lean evening that's all about pretending to say something while in fact it's not saying anything...It's dry, frequently tripping up in the banality of its own self-deluded adventurousness...Friend art is more or less the only kind of art there is, but it doesn't make for a good reason to see 'Friend Art' when so many other options are available that find much more worth in looking outward than inward."
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"It’s a worthy and interesting idea for a play, and begs us all to examine our actions and motivations for working on our creative endeavors, but even with the fresh and surprising start to this play, it remains in the category of ‘getting there’ and ‘still needs work’...It remains unclear what Alverez is trying to tell us with these scenes. Here lies one of the problems with this untidy unpolished play. Many of these encounters feel like setups rather then organic and real."
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"The thing is, 'Friend Art' doesn't rise above the level its title suggests. There are moments that suggest Alvarez is a good writer and that the ideas in 'Friend Art' have potential...But Alvarez only gives us seeds. She doesn't delve into anything too deeply, and, in fact, seems to abandon what had been presented as the A-plot...I saw glimmers of hope for a character study of a modern young woman, and instead I got friend art.”
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