After seeing Redat GableStage in South Florida, you’ll want to head straight to the nearest art museum and spend the drivetime debating the commercial and personal properties of painting, the succession of generations and whether natural light is overrated. And you’ll be marveling at this sparkling production of the Tony- and-Olivier-winning two-man play that centers on abstract expressionist Mark Rothko as he struggles to train a young assistant and create “pulsing” rectangles of muted colors for a new high-priced restaurant.
The time is 1958-59, the place is Rothko’s New York studio (wonderfully rendered by Lyle Baskin, with Jeff Quinn’s pale gray light fighting to get through two tall windows), and Rothko, in his mid-50s, is working on the legendary commission for murals to adorn the Four Seasons restaurant being built for the new Seagram Building in midtown Manhattan. Rothko is volubly proud of being among the wave of artists that he says killed Cubism, but he has no patience for the new painters placing “comic books and soup cans” inside their frames. Rothko thinks to classical music; his new hire listens to jazz.
As a screenwriter, John Logan was Oscar-nominated for his work on “The Aviator” and “Gladiator,” but Red is no sprawling epic. As directed by producing artistic director Joseph Adler, it’s a brisk, 75-minute portrait of art, ego, the work of creating – only “10 percent is putting paint onto the canvas” – and when to let go.
Or let loose. When Rothko (played by Gregg Weiner) prepares to mix paints, he orders “Black No. 4” from newly hired go-fer Ken (Ryan Didato) and wonders aloud what else is needed. Ken suggests “red,” which brings a tirade from Rothko that develops into a riff between the two on myriad shades of red – from lipstick and pomegranates to sunrises and blood.
Busy and accomplished South Florida actor Gregg Weiner is beardless this time out and looks a lot like the artist, and his vocal timbre here seems far different than in other stage appearances, but this is no impersonation, no caricature of a stereotype.
Ryan Didato more than holds his own as the seemingly callow assistant and does it, at times, with his arms outstretched to wrestle with giant canvases of Rothko works (as rendered by David Marsh and Baskin).
To risk a Red-style tirade: Short name, short play, big entertainment, plenty to think about, lots to enjoy.
