Red is compelling look into minds of modern artists
Nothing quite like the first day on a new job — particularly when your new job is assisting one of the most famous artists in the world.
That’s the scenario Ken (Braden Griffiths), a young, aspiring New York painter finds himself plunged into in the opening scene of Red, Alberta Theatre Projects’ smart, chatty look into how an artist’s mind works. How’s that again? Well, the artist’s mind at work — definitely a double-edged sword. Artists can be passionate, original, boundary-pushing visionaries who change the world with a single brush stroke.
They can also be self-absorbed, grandiose, narcissistic jerks who believe the world stops at the entrance to their studio.
Judging by Red, both of those descriptions could be applied to Mark Rothko (Allan Morgan), one of the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s (along with people like William de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Saskatchewan native Agnes Martin), who rewrote the book on contemporary art.
Rothko, who emigrated to Portland with his family at the age of nine, isn’t some posh trust fund brat discovered by Vanity Fair Magazine in his 20s either — Red is set when Rothko is 59, and has enjoyed a decade at the top of his — and the art world’s — game.
He’s been commissioned, for a staggering (1950s) sum of $35,000, by architect Philip Johnson to create a series of murals in the Four Seasons Restaurant being built uptown inside the new Seagram’s Building in the heart of midtown.
Unfolding in a quintet of scenes that are essentially dialogues between Ken and Rothko, Red digs into a lot of juicy art talk, as Rothko essentially assumes the role of paint-splattered mentor and father figure to wide-eyed Ken.
The success or failure of any production of Red rides largely on who plays the role of Rothko, and director Vanessa Porteous has pulled a winning ticket here casting Allan Morgan.
Morgan, the heart and head of such standout productions as Theatre Calgary’s Pride and Prejudice and Much Ado About Nothing and ATP’s award-winning 2012 production of Karen Hines’ Drama: Pilot Episode, simply explodes out of the gate the moment Ken steps into his studio and he doesn’t much stop until 90 minutes later, when Ken departs for good.
This is a larger-than-life character captured very much in his lair — his studio — where the workday is filled with a steady stream of smokes, sipping scotch and impassioned conversations about esthetics.
It’s also got its share of artist gossip — you almost want to yell out to Ken, “Don’t talk about Jackson Pollock!” — as Rothko kvetches about who is on the rise and who is on the fall in the New York art world of that very moment.
Morgan does a masterful job of handling large swaths dialogue — or more accurately, ranting about whatever it is has got his dander up. It’s a fine dance, because the truth of the matter is that this Rothko is not what you might call a great guy.
He doesn’t so much welcome Ken into his rarefied art world as he does ask him to bear witness, as Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson once said, to “the magnificence of me.”
He doesn’t ask Ken about his painting, invite him over for dinner or do any of those little things to help a young, up-and-comer feel a little less fragile.
All of this leads to one of Ken’s rare outbursts of ire at Rothko, where he reveals a personal anecdote about his past that feels completely over-the-top and strains credulity. It’s almost as if playwright John Logan — the screenwriter of the latest (and two upcoming) Bond films, as well as Scorcese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator and Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator — feels the need to make up for the overabundance of twinky chatter by hitting us over the head with an emotional sledgehammer.
However, Griffiths is as persuasive here as he is patient, and taciturn and supportive elsewhere, whether it’s helping prepare Rothko’s canvasses by slopping on some lovely rust-coloured primer, or stapling canvass to a frame, or sharing scotch with the boss.
It all creates a dynamic that might not work at a dinner party, but somehow, in the context, feels organic and even, in its own way, nurturing.
Rothko, who had to drop out of Yale due to economic hardship, and spent 25 years painting in the kitchen of his apartment, might be a self-absorbed a-hole, but he’s also giving Ken a bit of an education in the Art School of Hard Knocks.
At the same time, Ken re-invigorates Rothko by challenging him on his artistic authenticity and questioning his motives behind accepting the Four Seasons commission.
By the end of Red, Pop Art has arrived to supplant the Expressionists, and Ken has grown up a little as an artist before Rothko sends him out into the world to find his voice.
Morgan doesn’t have as much opportunity to tend to the heart as the head in Red, but when he does, it proves to be a perfect meeting of character and the actor who plays him.