Color me Red @ The Cleveland Play House 3/21/12
Reviewed by Laura Kennelly
If Ab-Ex artist Mark Rothko wasn’t really as strong-willed as John Logan’s creation in Red, then maybe he should have been. Logan’s Rothko has a big ego and (possibly) a big talent. Red provides a riff on a dangerous aspect of creating art — the desire for perfection, a desire which simultaneously impels and dehabilitates creative minds.
The play opens with the imposing, intimidating figure of Rothko (Bob Ari) standing staring into the audience. Then we learn that he’s really staring, not at us, but at his latest canvas, one of a series he has a huge commission to create for the upscale Four Seasons restaurant in New York City. But he’s not happy — it’s just not right. He spends the rest of the play fretting about that and the “God damn S.O.B. art critics” he says are “not human beings.”
Ari shows both power and vulnerability in the role. He’s believable and takes over the stage. I once saw Don Rickles in a one-man Las Vegas show. Ari’s Rothko reminds me of that — ugly, sarcastic, self-loathing — you have to watch him, but it’s hard to like him.
When Ken, the hapless young man he’s hired to assist him, comes in for his first day at work, Rothko begins to harass him in a systematic attempt to make the younger man feel less than human. Randy Harrison’s Ken falls into submissive role quickly. When the two prime a canvas together the action is so sexually charged that Rothko has a cigarette afterwards.
Although dramatic action in the play turns in part when Ken finally lashes out, Harrison doesn’t seem strong enough to create the fireworks the scene needs, but he does make me believe Ken will never recover from the experience or create anything of his own worth seeing. Toward the end of the play when the stage is bathed in blood-red light, we remember that Rothko will end his own life and be found in a pool of blood in his own studio. Did Logan mean us to conclude that the artist had finally found the proper shade of red?
Today, both the real and the fictional Rothko might be satisfied to see his works displayed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC instead of on walls for foodies and fashionistas. Directed by Anders Cato, the 2010 Best Play Tony Award winner runs through Sun 4/8 at the Allen Theatre in Playhouse Square. Tickets are available at PlayhouseSquare ticket office by calling 216-241-6000 or online at http://www.ClevelandPlayHouse.com.
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.