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Red Reviewed
Post #1499 • January 19, 2012, 8:14 AM • 1 Comment
![[Image: Thomas Derrah in the role of Mark Rothko in the SpeakEasy Stage's production of RED, Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo]](http://www.artblog.net/static/posts/2012/01/red/rothko.jpg)
Thomas Derrah in the role of Mark Rothko in the SpeakEasy Stage's production of RED, Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo
My first theater review sees Red:
As a visual artist, it’s possible that I would have found no script for Red, a portrayal of Mark Rothko, wholly acceptable. Yes, the man was given to paranoia, megalomania, and outsize judgments upon his fellow mortals, with the harshest sentences reserved for his colleagues in the art world. But this theatrical personality was bound to reinforce the stereotypical portrait of the artist as a difficult loon. Entertainment was all but guaranteed. Insight into Rothko’s work, postwar abstraction in general, and the demands of artistic production were not.
Read the whole thing at The Arts Fuse.
1.
Donna Dodson
January 20, 2012, 12:02 PM
Nice review. I saw the play on Saturday night in Boston with my partner. I enjoyed the dialogue between the two characters but my partner thought the Boston production was lacking compared to the one he saw in New York City last year. Many of the conversations seemed like familiar territory but I was glad to have the chance to go see a play about visual artists. That's a good question, for the playwright to answer: where does a great work of art come from? Through what relationship is it born? We didn't see too much of the artist's struggle that led him to make his greatest works, maybe because it was an entirely inner struggle with concerns that remained wholly personal.