PAINT THE TOWN RED!

Red (stage2view.com)

Verdict: Dark red ★★★✩✩

I’VE always loved the American Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, so I couldn’t resist Michael Grandage’s 2018 revival of John Logan’s portrait of the artist, starring Alfred Molina. For a man whose work is often associated with Zen Buddhsim, Logan intriguingly paints him as an autocratic grinch.

Molina’s Rothko reminded me of the mumbling Marlon Brando stroking his smooth pate as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Yet Logan manages to turn this truculent, self- i mportant, penny-pinching alcoholic (who killed himself in 1970) into a heroic figure, trying to keep hold of his will to live. (We’re a long way from Grandage’s production of Frozen!)

It’s a fascinating performance, capturing the vitality of the man in a scene where he and his assistant (Alfred Enoch) throw themselves at a canvas, covering it in red paint. Add to that Adam Cork’s eerie soundtrack and you have an exquisitely sombre 90 minutes that, if anything, only made me appreciate Rothko more.