‘Red’ paints a picture of modern artist Mark Rothko

Alfred Molina stars as Abstract Expressionist legend in a new Broadway drama

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

A new bio drama regarding modern art master Mark Rothko, "Red" is smartly crafted, strikingly staged and beautifully designed.

Yet for all of its excellence, the Donmar Warehouse import from London which opened Thursday at the Golden Theatre lacks the sizzle one usually expects to enjoy in a hot Broadway drama. Alfred Molina portrays Rothko with brooding urgency but never rages quite as mightily as might be hoped.

Set inside Rothko's studio in the late 1950s, American playwright John Logan's two-character study is written somewhat to formula: An explosive real-life legend talks about their times and art to a younger stranger who later confides his own terrible secrets to said personage. Right now over at the Lyceum, the same scenario is being used to depict Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped."

In this case, the great Abstract Expressionist painter Rothko hires fresh-out-of-art-school apprentice Ken (Eddie Redmayne) to assist him on a series of murals commissioned for an unprecedented fee by the much-heralded Four Seasons restaurant in New York. "I will make it a temple," vows Rothko.

A classier piece of work than "Looped," the 90-minute drama transpires over two years as the seething Rothko paints, pontificates on artists from Michelangelo to Jackson Pollock, paints some more, explains his burning desire to control the environment around his artworks and finally is confronted by Ken in a worm-has-turned faceoff regarding the rising tide of Pop artists.

Such interesting stuff - if one happens to be interested in such stuff -- is given extra eloquence visually by Christopher Oram's impressive design for Rothko's shadowy warehouse-like studio. Lighted with considerable beauty and drama by Neil Austin, glowing replicas of Rothko's large, glowering canvases situated at center stage back up all of the painter's arguments about art and culture.

The dramatic high point of director Michael Grandage's well-calibrated show is a silent yet exhilarating sequence as both Rothko and Ken, armed with brushes and pumped up by classical music blazing on the hi-fi, attack a vast blank canvas and madly prime every inch of it with a coating of dark maroon paint. Without a word said, these several minutes wonderfully evoke the primal intensity of artistic creation.

The imposing, bullet-headed Molina is suitably brusque and brainy as the obsessive Rothko. Yet Molina does not viscerally connect with his character as an F. Murray Abraham or a Judd Hirsch might and as a result the production lacks the electrical charge necessary for a truly memorable time. The latest sweet-faced young actor from the British stage in the boyish Jude Law-Hugh Dancy manner, Redmayne looks picturesque in his paint-spattered t-shirt and ably depicts Ken with a sense of watchful reserve — even if his acquired Iowa accent sounds strangely Irish.

"Red" continues through June 27 at the Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St., New York. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.redonbroadway.com.