From the Donmar Warehouse in London - which brought you Frost/Nixon, Mary Stuart and this season's Hamlet with Jude Law - comes the thrilling new American play, Red. This critically acclaimed, 90-minute drama comes direct from a sold-out run in London, starring two-time Tony Award nominee Alfred Molina and breakthrough British star Eddie Redmayne.
Master American expressionist Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art. But when his young assistant gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. Raw and provocative, with ground-breaking performances, Red is a searing portrait of an artist's ambition and vulnerability as he tries to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting.
Written by Academy Award nominee John Logan (The Aviator, Gladiator) and directed by Olivier winner and Tony Award nominee Michael Grandage (Frost/Nixon, Hamlet), Red is an award-winning production coming direct to Broadway, offering a moving and compelling account of an artist's struggle for integrity amidst fame and self-doubt.
Alfred Molina, under normal circumstances a consummately fine actor, is here inexplicably reminiscent of Sgt. Bilko, while Eddie Redmayne plays his earnest young assistant with a dude-that's-soooo-cool slacker accent, a puzzling choice for a play set in the late '50s. As for the script, it consists of one high-art platitude after another ('To surmount the past, you must know the past'), most of them shouted by Mr. Molina. Even if the real-life Rothko talked this way, it doesn't make for good theater, nor does it tell you much of anything about the greatness of his paintings.
Let’s be cynical for a moment and speculate as to why Red was such a hit in London, generating sufficient hype to catapult it over the pond. It wasn’t the subject, AbEx icon Mark Rothko, even though he’s bigger in London than here. It wasn’t the star, Alfred Molina, wonderful though he is. It wasn’t even the Hollywood pedigree of author John Logan, who scripted Gladiator and Sweeney Todd. The answer, I think, is simple: Red offered English audiences the spectacle of a great artist rejecting American mammon: Rothko returning his $35,000 commission for the Seagram Murals in 1959. Those ominous, throbbing, blood-colored ciphers may puzzle us, but one lesson is clear: Never underestimate the British public’s appetite for transatlantic schadenfreude.
2010 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2018 | West End |
Michael Grandage Company Revival West End |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Redmayne |
2010 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Play | Alfred Molina |
2010 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Director of a Play | Michael Grandage |
2010 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design | Neil Austin |
2010 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Set Design | Christopher Oram |
2010 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Alred Molina |
2010 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Production of a Play | 0 |
2010 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | John Gassner Playwriting Award | John Logan |
2010 | Theatre World Awards | Performance | Eddie Redmayne |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Michael Grandage |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Lighting Design of a Play | Neil Austin |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Eddie Redmayne |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Alfred Molina |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Stephanie P. McClelland/Hageman-Rosenthal |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Neal Street Productions/Matthew Byam Shaw |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Fox Theatricals |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Ruth Hendel/Barbara Whitman |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | The Donmar Warehouse |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Arielle Tepper Madover |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Play | John Logan |
2010 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Play | Christopher Oram |
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