NEW YORK — Back in the 1990s, you couldn’t get away from “Art.” It spread like kudzu and moved faster than the lips of a greedy auctioneer at Sotheby’s.

New York, London. Chicago. Long runs of Yasmina Reza’s slick, savvy, star-friendly satire of upper-middle-class mores became ubiquitous. I must have seen the thing a dozen times. Theaters gorged on a minimalist three-character soupçon that needed only one set, if any at all, lasted only 90 minutes, leaving time for both dinner and show, and made audiences feel like consumers of sophisticated aesthetic inquiry without really challenging their tired brains.

Not long ago, people were saying plays like “Art” were everything that was wrong with Broadway — although usually without asking actual audiences. Now “Art,” as translated by Christoph

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