Review: Paint It RED, Not Black, at Open Stage

"I see a red door and I want it painted black; No colors anymore, I want them to turn black.
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes; I have to turn my head until my darkness goes."

That may have been the Rolling Stones' paean to depression, but it wasn't Mark Rothko's: "There is only one thing I fear, my friend, and that is that the black may swallow the red." For Rothko, as for the Stones, red was life, energy, movement; black was the cessation of red.

RED is also the title of John Logan's play about Rothko, dealing with the period when he'd accepted a commission from the architects of the Four Seasons Restaurant to decorate its walls with murals. Rothko, with Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning, was, if you missed him, a major post-war artist, before the rise of Pop Art, and one of the greatest of the abstract expressionists, a master of color use.

Why a play about a painter? Was his life, like Van Gogh's, that tragic? No. Was it as supposedly-lurid as Gaugin's? No. Was it as exciting as Picasso's? Hardly. Rothko was a scholarly man who spoke four languages, wrote articles on art philosophy, and exchanged in what one might call "healthy dialogue" with his contemporaries. He was a voracious student of philosophy and mythology, which deeply colored his works even as his styles changed. It is his theories of art that excite. It is the joy with which he and his contemporaries conquered Cubist art, and the pain he felt on seeing his work supplanted by the Pop Art of Warhol and Lichtenstein that fascinate. It is the renouncing of his commission for a set of murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building in Manhattan that intrigues.

And therein lies RED, a celebration of Rothko's philosophy, his feelings about the use of color and its symbolism, and his qualms about the Four Seasons commission. It is Logan's riveting exploration of the mind of one of modern art's deepest thinkers. A brain alone is not intriguing, and so Logan created Ken, an assistant to Rothko who helps mix his paints, stretch and primer canvases, and who listens to Rothko's opinions and challenges them. It is a show of talk and not action - but what talk! The minds of the audience are fully engaged - there is no sleeping through this show, because Rothko's leaps between concepts are as breathtaking as the leaps of circus gymnasts. That it won the 2010 Tony for Best Play is no surprise once one settles in for the dialogue. Logan is a master of words as Rothko was of paint, and the combination is an intellectual gem.

At Open Stage, the production directed by Don Alesedek is lush and as color-saturated as Rothko's works, copies of which are strewn about the set that represents his studio, although the fabled Four Seasons murals, now in museums, are never shown. That's true to reality, for when Rothko returned his commission check, the paintings were stored, unshown to others, for years.

Jeff Wasiliski bears a resemblance to Rothko, but more than that, it's possible to feel Rothko's spirit moving in him, to feel Rothko's use of color, especially the vitality that he found in red, to fight off the black and all that it symbolized for him. His command of the part is a delight, and his handling of Logan's dialogue is masterful. Jeremy Burkett plays the mythical Ken, would-be artist, assistant, and occasional provocateur for Rothko's thoughts. Burkett's spare talents as a painter come into play during the staging, which is both helpful and fascinating to watch, but his handling of Ken as Rothko's underappreciated apprentice and foil is more than solid. His Ken particularly comes to life about 90 minutes in, in a marvelous bit between Rothko and Ken as they prime a canvas in the color of drying blood while they debate. The chemistry of the team is such that it would be possible, pleasantly so, to move them to New York with this production and not have it come amiss. This is by far one of the best shows in the area so far this season.

At Open Stage through the 30th. Visit openstagehbg.com for tickets and information.

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