Note to playwright John Logan: Get on your knees and thank the Lord on high or whatever otherworldly power you call “Higher” for Alfred Molina. Molina brings to bear the full measure of his lifetime of exploring what it is to be an artist as he steps back in time to
1958 and into the skin of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko in Logan’s “Red” at the Mark Taper Forum. Molina fills the stage with as much potency as Rothko filled his canvas with the color red. Firing off line after line of nearly perfect dialogue like so many word- paint- balls, Molina splatters the interior space of the Taper with the guts of a man caught in a wrestling match with the patron demon of the artist – commercial success.
As Rothko’s naïve assistant, Ken, Jonathan Groff, (“Spring Awakening”) avoids simply employing his innate talents of voice, rhythm, and looks. With eyes wide open and heart displayed, Groff walks Ken into the conflicted relationship with Rothko.
For 90 minutes, the two dance and spar and explore not just the murals Rothko has been commissioned to paint, but even more, their respective need of one another. The relationship, which begins with Rothko warning Ken “I am not your Rabbi, I am not your father, I am not your shrink, I am not your friend,” ends with him, perhaps reluctantly, becoming all those things. Rothko makes the ultimate paternal sacrifice delivering his young charge from the threshold of youth into the world and away from the bosom of home.
John Logan’s imagination was sparked by the true- story of Mark Rothko’s commission to create a series of murals for the then new Four Seasons Restaurant in the heart of Manhattan in 1957. Rothko took the commission, created the works, all the while struggling with questions of morality of art, integrity of man, and the ultimate topic: mortality. Logan’s play came from London to Broadway in 2010 and won six well- deserved Tony Awards.
Mark Rothko’s life in total is cinema worthy – beginning as the son of intellectual Russian Jews, finding his gifts as a struggling artist in the late 1920s in New York, coming to prominence, ending in a tragic suicide in the 1970s, and a post script drama of what became of his works.
Theatergoers typically know approximately ten minutes into a two- person play what we are in for. Less than three minutes into the opening night performance, the audience quickened in our seats with the realization that we had purchased an E- ticket to a thrill ride of theater.
Under Michael Grandage’s precise direction, in a world marvelously created by designer Christopher Oram, shades of red, black, and all colors of the human drama come to life in Red.
Photo by Craig Schwartz