Red, a Curtain Up London review

Selling a picture is like sending a blind child into a room full of razor blades. . .that's why I'm looking to do something different with these ones. They're less vulnerable somehow, more robust, some hues fro the earth even to give them strength. And they're not alone. They're a series, they'll always have each other for companionship and protection.
— Rothko, about the painting created for a specific place-- though the Four Seasons Restaurant turns out not to be the "place of reflection and safety" that he initially envisioned, but instead an environment that would embody everything he despised about how contemporary art was marketed and viewed.

Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko (Johan Persson)

It's been more than a dozen years since my first encounter with playwright John Logan and actor Albert Molina. In 1997 Logan brought a remarkably fresh perspective to the much told story of the teen killers Leopold and Loeb 's with Never the Sinner. Just a year later Alfred Molina barreled on stage with a Tony-worthy showstopping monologue in Yasmina Rez's comedy hit Art.

Molina, a dramatic actor, daringly returned to Broadway in 2005 as the world's most famous fictional singing milkman in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof, but Logan was profitably sidetracked to films (The Aviator and Sweeney Todd). Now, after a successful world premiere at London's Donmar Warehouse, New Yorkers have a chance to see both Logan's playwriting expertise and Molina's versatility as an actor thrillingly on display in Red

Red is like Molina's first Broadway play also about art — the art of the renowned abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, specifically a series of canvases he was commissioned to create for the new Seagram building's Four Seasons restaurant on Park Avenue. That commission was a turning point in Rothko's struggle to deal with the compromises of riches and acclaim. But Red is not a comedy — Rothko was too complicated a man for comedy, as are the various issues explored in the course of the play's fleet-footed 90 minutes. Yet Logan's script is peppered with dialogue that's sharp and funny as well as intelligent, thought provoking and often devastating.

Mr. Logan's astutely constructed script and Molina's riveting performance, impressively supported by Eddie Redmayne as his assistant, will quickly upend any idea you may have that listening to an extremely intellectual painter talk about his process for making art may be more like watching paint dry than an exciting drama. Red, besides being one of the most stimulating dramas to land on Broadway this season, is a visual stunner. The recreated Rothko paintings are powerful; not just props, but vivid characters.

Redmayne, like Molina, is reprising the role of Ken that he created in London. As Lizzie Loveridge mentioned in her review, Ken initially seems little more than his employer's foil, but the role gains in significance as the young apprentice begins to challenge the older man. The drama gains momentum through Logan's confining it within the studio and the two men's conversations. Since their interchanges, usually dominated by Rothko, play out over two years (1958-59), the bits and pieces of Rothko's early life, as well as Ken's personal history, meld in organically.

As Ken emerges as the symbol of the pop artists who threaten Rothko's hard won top of the heap status and offend his sensibility, so Rothko's relationship with him ends up symbolizing all fathers who — whether painters, politicians, or businessmen — must set their heirs free to follow their own inclinations.

The physical demands on both actors are breathtakingly realized in the scene in which Beethoven's 9th Symphony propels the men into a frenzied dance that has them covering one of the large canvases with a base coat of red paint. Music plays an important role throughout. The production values overall are superb, with the London design team aboard. Lighting designer Neil Austin most effectively and subtly highights the shifts in emphasis on the red and the black panels.

When Ken loses his cool and accuses Rothko of cold indifference to him, both as a person and as a painter, he fails to stir up any regrets or apologies. Being the egoist he is, Rothko answers Ken's "Have you ever once asked to look at my work?" as follows: "Why should I?. . .You're an employee. This is about me. Everything here is about me." For some audiences this had an unanticipated double meaning, since it tended to bring to mind another show that landed in town around the same time entitled All About Me. In that entirely missable and short-lived endeavor cabaret artist Michael Feinstein and drag-comedienne Dame Edna Everage spent their 90 minutes on stage arguing about who should be the Me of the title. On the other hand, Albert Molina's Me may not be a lovable, cuddly hero, but everything about his performance and the play generally is all about a not to be missed theatrical experience.

For more details about the production jump to the Original London Review.

Trivia Note: While most of the Four Seasons canvases are on view at the Tate in London, the restaurant has not replaced the withdrawn commissions with another famous artist's work, but instead fills the room for which they were intended with works borrowed from the PaceWildenstein galleries. Rothko's ruminations about Jackson Pollock's suicide are prescient, since he too committed suicide. Production Notes
Red by John Logan
Directed by Michael Grandage
Starring: Alfred Molina, Eddie Redmayne
Set and CostumeDesign: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Neil Austin
Composer and Sound: Adam Cork
Stage Manager: Arthur Gaffin

Running time: One hour 30 minutes without intermission
Golden Theater 252 W. 45th Street 212/239-6200
From 3/11/10; opening 4/01/10;closing 6/27/10
Tickets $116.50; as part of Donmar commitment to greater accessibility 60 seasts at $25 for each performance
Tues-Saturday at 8pm; matinees Wed and Sat. matinees at 2pm, Sundays at 3pm; after 4/12: Tuesdays at 7pm
Reviewed by Elyse Sommer March 27th press preview