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Red (play)

Red
Red (play cover).jpg
Written by John Logan
Characters Mark Rothko
Ken
Date premiered December 3, 2009 (2009-12-03)
Place premiered Donmar Warehouse, London
Original language English
Genre Drama
Setting Bowery, New York

Red is a play by American writer John Logan about artist Mark Rothko first produced by the Donmar Warehouse, London in December 2009. The original production was directed by Michael Grandage and performed by Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his fictional assistant Ken.

The production, with its two leads, transferred to Broadway at the John Golden Theater for a limited engagement which began on March 11, 2010 and closed on June 27. It was the 2010 Tony Award winner for Best Play. Additionally, Redmayne won a 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.

"There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend... One day the black will swallow the red."

Mark Rothko is in his New York studio in 1958-9, having been commissioned to paint a group of murals for the expensive and exclusive Four Seasons restaurant. He gives orders to his assistant, Ken, as he mixes the paints, makes the frames, and paints the canvases. Ken, however, brashly questions Rothko's theories of art and his acceding to work on such a commercial project. For his part, Rothko dislikes the rise of Pop art.

Ultimately, Rothko stops working on the project and decides to return the money. He explains to Ken that the Four Seasons is an inappropriate place for his murals to be seen.

Reviews for the London production were mixed for the play but positive for Molina's performance. Michael Billington in The Guardian wrote: "Alfred Molina, with his large frame and beetling eyebrows, has exactly the fierce intensity of an artist whose paintings were a dynamic battle between Apollo and Dionysus, ."

In reviewing the Broadway production, Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press wrote: "They are the tantalizing first words of Red, John Logan's engrossing, often enthralling new play about art, an artist and the act of creation." Those first words were "What do you see?" Variety wrote that "Alfred Molina is majestic".


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