 Red tells a story of two years in the life of Mark Rothko (Alfred Molina) bounded by the employment of his assistant Ken (Alfred Enoch).
Red is currently playing at Wyndham's Theatre in London. The script is dense (and I'm sure I'll have more to say once I've read the script). and there is a lot to tease out of the play itself, not least the staging and performances. The staging was wonderful, simple, and effective with few moving parts. 'Scene changes' were marked by Rothko and Ken moving huge and nearly-unwieldy canvases around. Molina and Enoch were both on stage for nearly the entire 90-minute performance (continuously, no interval), and were both energetic and raw, and their relationship was palpable and genuine. Onto the art: I felt most artistically 'inspired' during the dialogue where Rothko and Ken were talking about Jackson Pollock. I've never actually liked Pollock's work that much, but it was interesting to hear the (constructed, obviously) Rothko (whose [real] work I do greatly admire) talk about both his process and his death. The connection between The Work and art was also interesting, but in a much more philosophical way. I read Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy during both my degree and my PhD and I struggled though it both times and never really engaged with the text as a philosophical work - listening to Rothko and Ken discuss the Dionysian and Apollonian as internal dichotomies (rather than external ones) felt very real and raw to me - and something I have thought (and discarded) about my own bipolar. I enjoyed the play on several levels, but won't make further comment until I have read the script.
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