Red

I was a little nervous about seeing Red, the new play at the Golden Theatre, because my knowledge of art and, particularly, painter Mark Rothko is virtually non-existent.  Luckily, that lack of knowledge didn't matter.  What I saw was a great play and two brilliant performances that blew me away for 90 minutes.

                                  

                           Alfred Molina (left) plays the painter, Mark Rothko (right)

"Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting. A moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing."--the synopsis from the Wikipedia article


The play spans a period of two years in which Rothko has been commissioned by the owners of The Four Seasons Restaurant in midtown Manhattan.  His job, with help from his assistant, Ken, is to simply create art for the restaurant.  His plan, though, is to create "something that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room."  

 The play is really a struggle between light and dark or even old and young with Rothko feeling threatened by the emergence of a batch of up and coming artists, including Andy Warhol.  He refuses to admit this, of course, and instead blasts the new artists as, basically, useless with nothing to say.

While the play is about art and painting, at its heart, it's about the relationship between these two characters. I'm sure that director Michael Grandage and playwright John Logan would agree that they couldn't have gotten two better actors for these roles.

Alfred Molina embodies the role of Rothko with a fire that's a mix of anger and an underlying fear.  Anger that no one appreciates his work the way it should be and fear that he'll be considered insignificant.  He has no problem giving his opinions and thoughts about others but, could care less what anyone else thinks.  He does a brilliant job and you believe he IS this artist just wanting to be seen the way he thinks he should.

The real surprise here, though, is Eddie Redmayne.  An actor as powerful as Alfred Molina could easily overshadow most actors in this show.  Luckily, Mr. Redmayne is not most actors.  His Ken more than matches his light with Mr. Rothko's dark.  At the start, Ken seems like a bit of a push over art student willing to do whatever it takes but, as the play progresses, you see that there is much more to this young man.  In one scene in particular when Ken gets extremely angry, Mr. Redmayne gets so into it that he has tears streaming down his face.  That is such an amazing thing to see!

The two together make for a powerful 90 minutes that you don't even realize has gone by until it's over.  The show has been nominated for 7 Tonys, this year.  It may not win them all but, I'd be shocked NOT to see both actors and the play win when the awards are announced next month.  Being a mostly musical boy, I don't usually get into plays as much as I did this one.  But, this one's a keeper.

Until next time...