The Stage

Red

Published Wednesday 9 December 2009 at 13:25 by Ben Dowell

Ken, the young wannabe artist character in John Logan’s new play, has picked a pretty good artist to assist - and his timing’s not bad either.

For the two years in which this engrossing new work takes place, Ken’s boss, the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, is painting the Seagram murals, his late great work of magisterial profundity that sealed his reputation - and some would say his fate - and which he never allowed to hang in the fancy restaurant they were commissioned for.

We end in 1959, a decade before Rothko took his own life in 1970, in a similar paint-splashed studio, wonderfully re-created by designer Christopher Oram.

While a little shaky and all-too convenient, the premise nevertheless allows Michael Grandage’s skilful production to paint in detail Rothko’s artistic manifesto and principles on to the blank canvas of the youngster, brilliantly played by Eddie Redmayne.

At times it feels like a history of art lecture and it is hard to believe that a man like Rothko, given the chronic narcissism and solipsistic agonising he shows here, would take time to speak to such a young pretender, especially given his initial scorn towards him and professed fears about the new generation of pop artists who were then wowing New York.

But there is no doubting the brilliance of Alfred Molina’s performance which inhabits Rothko’s despair almost as if he is trapped inside one of the dark black lines of a Seagram mural.

Redmayne is a fabulous foil, at first cowed and silent, he eventually finds his voice as Rothko’s begins to croak, revealing his own personal tragedy and then finally standing up to the artist in a way which also seals his own destiny. Superb.

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