By Alan
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsSdhhv6ldg
Available until: 7pm on Wednesday 2nd
December
I like plays about real people a lot.
I also like plays about fictional people because it’s all about the
playwright’s imagination but there is something special about seeing a play
about a real person and then finding out about them. Often they’re not very
much like the real person or you can’t be sure what if they’re like the real
person or not. But it’s interesting just discovering a new person who is kind
of great in some way.
Red by John Logan is about the painter Mark
Rothko and his commission to do a series of paintings for the Four Seasons
restaurant. I like art but I hadn’t heard of him. So I read about him and he
had a really interesting life. He was Jewish and was born in what was then part
of the Russian Empire and is now Latvia. He moved to America, he did very well
at school but he dropped out of college and didn’t go back till they awarded
him an honorary degree which I thought was funny. He was very political and an
anarchist. He became interested in art when he saw other artists at work. He
had a group of painter friends and a group of anarchic friends. He started
writing a book which was a comparison between children’s art and the best
painters’ art but he didn’t finish it.
He has a wide range of influences and he was influenced a lot by books, plays and mythology. He used lots of different painting styles as he went through life. And as the play says, he was commissioned to create art for the Four Seasons restaurant, though that wasn’t the end of his career as Red seems to suggest (but I could have got that wrong), he continued working until his death twelve years later. He went on to create a series of paintings for Harvard University and for a chapel which is known as the Rothko chapel. He did hire assistants (which he does in this play), but not until he was old and he wasn’t strong enough to do his paintings which were very physical. He died by suicide and his final paintings are seen by some as suicide notes.
A lot happened to Rothko and some very
interesting people were part of his life but none of them were in Red.
The only other character is a fictional aspiring artist called Ken with a
traumatic past who is employed by Rothko as his assistant.
The thing with writing a play (I would
guess) is that if it’s not going to be a monologue your main character needs
someone to talk to but it needs to be the right person or people. I like the
idea of the older artist sort of passing the mantle to the young artist but
that kind of thing is done a lot and I think this play needed a bit more than
that. I think Rothko is a really good character but he is such a big character
I think maybe he needed another big character to measure up to him and
challenge him? Ken is a really likeable guy but he’s not really a big
character.
Director Michael Grandage has created
some great onstage images like where Rothko and Ken paint together to music. I
like Christopher Oran’s set, it looks kind of shabby and unfinished. There is
also some really amazing music by people like Mozart and Schubert. I don’t know
if it is in the script or not but it is really well chosen and it always adds
to what is happening onstage.
The acting is really good. Alfred
Molina characterises Rothko really well and he has a very big, powerful stage
presence. He shows you Rothko’s personality and his intelligence. It’s not a
comedy but there’s occasional funny bits and he delivers those bits just right.
It’s the kind of performance that just makes you stare even if you’re a bit
mixed on the actual play.
Alfred Enoch plays Ken and he is
actually really impressive too. Ken doesn’t have nearly as much depth as Rothko
and isn’t as big a character so he was always going to be overpowered a bit but
Alfred Molina NEVER shows Alfred Enoch up. Alfred Enoch does everything he can
with what is written for him and he does it really well.
I liked the play, it was interesting
and I’m glad I know who Mark Rothko is now.
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