It is strange what some people choose to spend their money on. Around the grounds of the Weston Manor Hotel, where Charterhouse Theatre Company staged a hugely entertaining outdoor production of Art last week, were luxury cars awaiting buyers at what was clearly a big promotional fair. There were Aston Martin Vanquishes at £160,000 each; Bentley Arnages costing even more. The total value must have run into millions.

These rich person's playthings made the Fr200,000 painting at the centre of Yasmina Reza's hugely successful three-hander seem pretty small beer in comparison. Yet picture and cars have something in common. Both are beautiful in the eyes of some who behold them; both are mere status symbols to others. The idea that rich medico Serge (Tom Sykes) is simply out to swank -- to show what a cultivated trendy he is becoming -- lies behind his friend Marc's annoyance with him for buying a picture that consists, in his view, simply of a blank white canvas. (Serge says he is wrong; that there are stripes and movement in the piece.) From being mildly irritated over the matter, Marc (Kyle Reece) steadily builds himself up into a towering, almost insane, rage.

During beautifully scripted -- and here beautifully acted -- exchanges, it soon becomes clear that their fall-out has less to do with the appreciation of art than with control. Marc, who seems always to have had the upper hand in their friendship, obviously doesn't like his pal developing ideas of his own. Caught in the middle is the rather sad figure of Yvan (David Chittenden). Once the joker of the trio, he now recognises that a boring job flogging stationery and an unhappy marriage in the offing have made a dull dog of him.

Nigel Havers, who starred in the West End as Serge (and whom I reviewed in the role at the Oxford Playhouse), directed this production. In doing so, he pointed up the many subtle nuances of the script (translator Christopher Hampton).

CHRISTOPHER GRAY