(Randy Harrison as Ken and Bob Ari as Mark Rothko)
You
may, at some point in your life, have wondered what it must feel like to be
inside the mind of a great painter. Well, you should probably be careful what
you wish for. Sometimes, it can be a dark and forbidding place.
In
the completely engrossing Red by John Logan, now at the Cleveland Play House,
we are ushered into the fevered cranium of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko.
And it is a 100-minute journey that flies by as two actors, portraying an older
Rothko and his young assistant, duke it out over painting and the ethical and
moral issues that attend contemporary art.
If
that sounds dry and stuffy, nothing could be further from the truth. Rothko
starts out the play as a booze-chugging, cigarette-smoking snark fest, and remains
that way to the end. But while his go-fer Ken is initially cowed by the
legendary artist, the young man grows into his own strong and acidic opinions.
That’s
when the sparks really fly in this Tony Award-winning play, as Ken challenges
Rothko about his famous commission of a mural for the Four Seasons restaurant
in the Seagram Building. Rothko burns with a need to challenge bourgeois
comfort, wanting to “stop your heart” with his paintings.
But
he’s also drawn to the big money his work fetches, and Ken eventually calls him
on it. Dubbing Rothko a “romantic,” he chides Rothko for placing his supposedly
tragic pieces, many the color of dried blood, into a venue of cosseted
consumption. This leads to the denouement that neatly echoes the real Rothko’s
final days.
Under
the firm and intelligent direction of Anders Cato, the actors are simply
splendid. As Ken, Randy Harrison deftly traces the young man’s path from
trembling underling to confident painter-to-be. And Rothko feels fully fleshed
out by Bob Ari, who throws away Logan’s caustic lines with perfectly modulated
skill.
When
Ari’s Rothko talks about how “alive” his canvases are compared to
representational painting, focusing on the intersection of colors, you feel
transported to a different and fascinating world. And when he explains his
shadowy studio by saying “Nature doesn’t work for me, the light’s no good,” you
almost want to go home and board up your windows.
Tormented
by the blackness of death, the one color he fears, Rothko’s Four Seasons
paintings feature a muted palette of maroons and siennas. This is represented
by the one facsimile painting that dominates the stage from the beginning.
But
what really overwhelms the stage throughout this remarkable production is the
mind of Rothko. As he once said, “Artists desperately seek pockets of silence
where we can root and grow.” Red offers those pockets, along with blazing
flurries of conversation, reflection and argument that will keep your head
spinning long after the curtain call.
Red
Through
April 8 at the Cleveland Play House, PlayhouseSquare. Call 216-241-6000.
