The Tony-award winning play Red comes to the Indiana Repertory Theatre Mainstage to provoke the audience into thinking about art and the process of making art. The production, like the play by John Logan, plays with the seemingly opposite ideas of “art for art’s sake” and “art as a commodity.”
Set in the late 1950s in New York, just as the New American Painting movement was acknowledged by the arts taste-makers, the preeiment artist Mark Rothko has been tasked with a mural project for the Four Seasons restaurant. Seagram’s, the booze maker, has commissioned the work, and the play finds Rothko hiring an assistant, Ken, who is over-eager to please and impress the tempermental painter in his studio. The two spar with words, conspire to create, and work through Rothko’s block about the works he’s supposed to create. In the end, he rejects the commission to create works that speak to the soul of the viewer.
Logan’s play deals with the latter part of Rothko’s artistic career, just after the critics had lauded his Abstract Expressionist works as “good investments” and his paintings began selling. He was a contemporary of Pollock, deKooning, and Kline, and was a harsh critic of the Pop Art movement that was emerging in New York. Like many artists, he suffered from depression and self-doubt, particularly as his works were beginning to gain attention. Veteran stage actor Henry Woronicz manages to dig deep into the script and pull the artist’s rage and doubt from the pages; Zach Kenney as assistant Ken plays the part of sounding board, critic, and antagonizer with subtlety and energy. Director James Still allows both actors enough room to play with the script, getting thoughtful performances from his charges.
Presented in the intimate Mainstage of the IRT, Red is a must-see play to kick off the theatre season in Indianapolis. The play continues through November 9. Visit www.irtlive.com for tickets and prices.