'Please stop laughing at me'

ArtsSpotlight

Her play 'Art' earned $200m and was performed in 35 languages - yet the French writer Yasmina Reza doesn't get the respect she feels she deserves. Will a starry new play and a year in the intimate company of President Sarkozy bring her the kudos she craves?

Her success may baffle some, yet for many it's the confirmation of Yasmina Reza's great talent. If God of Carnage, her latest play, is another triumph when it hits London later this month, her devotees will rejoice while others will take it as more evidence of a cultural demise and the victory of gimmickry over substance.

Like the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose every step she followed for a year, as detailed in her bestseller published in France last September under the rather grand title L'aube le soir ou la nuit ("Dawn Evening or Night"), Reza has become a divisive figure. Since her rise to international fame with Art, performed in 35 languages and grossing $200m, she has enthralled audiences while being branded the queen of "big ideas lite" and "little-black-dress theatre" by critics, who love resorting to the very same sophisticated cruelty that has become her trademark.

However, before mutual contempt soured the relationship, it was like a honeymoon. Surprised to see a French author spanning the cultural divide to make an international audience laugh, British and American theatre critics saluted her bravado and skill. At last, they sighed, a French author who isn't boring, doesn't ramble on, deploys a clear Cartesian plot and can keep to a 90-minute performance. Moreover, here is a French author who isn't too pompous, yet with just enough pretentiousness to remind the audience that the action takes place in Paris, and who can also squeeze elevated thoughts about death and sex between the jokes. But what they liked best was her wit. Across the Channel and the Atlantic, theatre critics had seen nothing like it since, who, Jean Anouilh? Or was it Molire?

Back in 1997, and aged only 37 - an abnormally young age for a successful French playwright - Reza spoke of living "a dream". I talked to her just before the opening of Art in London in October 1996, and her excitement was that of a debutante, fresh and childlike. For her, the London stage meant the world. "I know how seriously the British take theatre, how they love the written word, how critical they are. I feel incredibly honoured to have my play performed in London. There is simply no greater recompense."

Not only was her play performed in London, it went on to become a critical and commercial success, and what is often called a "cultural phenomenon". There were soon talks of a transfer to Broadway, thanks to Sean Connery who, after his French wife Michle saw the play in French in Paris, snapped up the rights. The awards flooded in: the elegantly dressed petite author with Persian eyes scooped a Molire, an Olivier and a Tony.

The success of 'Art' wasn't, however, achieved by chance. It was the result of a carefully orchestrated plan. And all Reza's ensuing plays have kept to the same pattern with impeccable discipline. First rule: get the best translator, whatever the cost - somebody who understands the words, culture and humour. Even better, get somebody who is himself, arguably, an even better writer and playwright. For the English versions of Art and God of Carnage In Britain, it was Christopher Hampton. (Ask David Hare who he thinks is the more substantial of the two. He made it quite clear at the time that his friend Hampton might be wasting his time lending his talent to Reza.)

Second rule: know your milieu. Reza, who turned to writing after an unsuccessful bout of acting, knows the theatre world inside-out. She writes first of all for actors. Her American translator, David Ives, in an interview for American Theatre Magazine, agrees: "The truth is that half the reason her plays get done is because actors want to do them. Her plays are so chewy for actors. I think that colleges want to get their fingers into them because it's the kind of intellectual card game that students like to do. There's a crackling surface there for a performer."

Reza serves actors great parts, saucy lines and crunchy monologues on a platter. And they come back asking for more. Devising three-month runs for Art, each with a star cast, proved key to its success. Since big names can't commit to a longer run, the show would hit the refresh button every 12 weeks.

The first cast (Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney and Ken Stott) enjoyed themselves so much that every actor in Britain wanted to try their hand at it. Art became a must. After six years, though, the producers, having almost used up all possible combinations of the best actors in town, with more than 20 different casts, dug into the pool of children's TV presenters to keep the show running. Then came the last cast - the League of Gentlemen trio, Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith. They didn't impress critics and the play bowed out in January 2003. "All this evening proves is that a play as bland and flimsy as this requires actors who are not only heroically talented but who also have formidable skills," wrote The Guardian critic Lyn Gardner at the time. Still, it had sold out for six years.