RED by John Logan is a ninety minute play about Mark Rothko and the Seagram Building murals.  It premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in 2009 and it’s currently playing at the Theatre Centre in a production designed and directed by Kenzia Dalie.  It’s a two person show in which Lindsay G. Merrihew plays Rothko and Brendan Kinnon plays his young assistant Ken.

It’s basically a conversation between the two about art, in all its aesthetic and historical complexity, as well as the capitalist infrastructure it’s embedded in; buyers, dealers, museums and so on.  It’s fascinating.  Rothko comes across as an opinionated, self-absorbed bully, but an immensely knowledgeable and interesting one.  Ken traverses an arc from responding in a rather servile way to learning to stand up to the bullying and shows himself capable of articulating views that are, ultimately, more liberal and humane than the older man’s.

They are not trivial conversations; at least not if you care about art.  Red versus Black.  Dionysos versus Apollo.  The morality of painting “designs” for a bougie restaurant.  How Abstract Expressionism “stomped Cubism to death” but will, in turn, be supplanted by Pop Art.  Jackson Pollock’s suicide.  And much more.

This all takes place in Rothko’s studio where pictures in various states of “doneness” cohabit with cigarettes, whisky, cheap take out and an ever present gramophone.  The detail is impressive.  The half finished Rothkos (by Ian Harper) look like half finished Rothkos.  The recordings sound like recordings from the 1950s.  There’s one scene where the pair are manically applying a red ground to a new canvas accompanied by an extract from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice; the scene where Orfeo is trying to enter Hades, and it’s old fashioned singing like you would never hear today.  It just felt so right.

It’s really impressive that two actors can maintain such intensity and interest for an hour and a half; especially given the often abstract nature of their conversation.  For all kinds of reasons I found it very, almost painfully, moving.

RED is presented by Riot King and runs at the Theatre Centre until April 6th.

Photo credit: Damon McClean