Red
Red, a play by John Logan that I admired very much when it opened in London in 2009, a regard which only deepened when I saw it again subsequently in NY and elsewhere, has just been released online by the National Theatre.
In 1958, one of America’s greatest living artists, Mark Rothko, accepted a commission to produce a series of large paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant to be situated in the new Seagram office Building in New York.
The ‘Seagram Murals‘ were a significant departure for Rothko. The intense, bright colours of his earlier paintings gave way to maroon, dark red and black. Rothko wished to create a deep connection between the viewer and his paintings: “I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom.”
He accepted the commission because he wanted a permanent setting where the works could always be shown as a group and in an immersive environment but, when the paintings were completed, Rothko decided that a restaurant would not be an appropriate location for his work. He donated nine of them to London’s Tate Gallery in 1969.
These are the paintings that Rothko is creating during Red. The British actor Alfred Molina is extraordinarily effective as the explosive and mercurial Russian/American painter. His foil is Ken, Rothko’s studio assistant, played in this 2018 revival by Alfred Enoch. Ken is a young painter, keen to work with the great man as a learning experience, an ambition Rothko soon disabuses him of. But together they form a relationship of master and pupil, one in which they learn from each other.
Red was directed by Michael Grandage at a small theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, London, and it then transferred to Broadway in March 2010 with Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne as Rothko and Ken, where it won 6 Tony Awards. This revival, in 2018, has Alfred Enoch in the role of Ken.
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