For the record, it's English. I was born in Tilbury, Essex, made temporarily 
American citizen?"
There’s a funny story I heard – probably apocryphal, but for the sake of this opening, let’s go with it – of a husband who was dragged to a Jasper Johns modern art exhibit. The husband hated it stating that the paintings were just a mess of colors. The wife tried to explain that the expert use of colors was to elicit certain emotions in the viewer, to which the husband replied, “…If he knows how to use colors so well, why doesn’t he paint a nice picture of a bunch of flowers next to a bowl of fruit?” I have a feeling that a play like Red, now showing at the Herberger Theatre, is just the kind of play written for that husband.
The winner of six Tony Awards, including Best Play, Red, written by John Logan, is a real event with imagined conversations. In 1958, abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko was commissioned by the new Four Seasons luxury restaurant to create and paint a series of murals that would be known as the Seagram Murals named after the beverage company Joseph Seagram and Sons who had purchased their new building on
His new assistant, Ken, is a brash young man who wants to be a painter. Initially eager to please and keen to learn, Ken questions Rothko’s approach to art every step of the way, prodding the famous artist to share his theories of art, commercialism, and the reasons behind Rothko’s acceptance of the commissioned work for The Four Seasons.
While Rothko was a real painter, Ken’s character is fiction, created for us to hear a sequence of imagined conversations between the two men as they work. It’s an approach that not only allows us to witness and explore the thoughts and feelings of a master and hear his theories of the use of color, why it’s used, what emotions and memories it can trigger, but also to help us understand why Rothko eventually questioned his own role in accepting such a huge commercial project.
Red, while verbally exploring theories of art, also shows us that such work really is work. Rothko keeps regular business hours, 9 to 5, forcing production on the murals rather than waiting for inspiration that might come for other painters at two in the morning, then painting into the early hours. It’s fascinating to watch Ken build frames from scratch with hammer and nails then staple material tightly stretched across the wood in order to make the canvas, while Rothko stirs and mixes the paint.
One of the most exhilarating moments is when we see Rothko and Ken prime a blank canvass while listening to classical music played on Rothko’s small studio record player. It’s a thrilling and well choreographed sequence as each man paints with speed and alacrity as if in a race to finish first, but ending the canvas in an obvious joint effort at the precise moment the music comes to an end. It’s an unexpected magical moment of theatre that has to be rewarded with applause.
Like gazing at a Rothko mural and coming away with different thoughts and feelings, depending on your appreciation of the arts, you may leave this fine production of Red taking something different with you. You might marvel at writer John Logan’s ability to write the kind of dialog between two people exploring a subject for which you had little initial interest yet managing to keep you riveted. Or maybe it’ll be the remarkable ability of both actors, Denis Arndt and Connor Toms, to flesh out
Or maybe you’ll come away grateful that the Arizona Theatre Company regularly brings such challenging productions like Red to the Valley so that most of us who can’t get to New York can still enjoy them. Whatever you walk away with, the end result will be the same; immense satisfaction.
For times, dates and tickets, CLICK HERE to go directly to the ATC website.
