The Toronto Theatre Review: Riot King’s Red
By Ross
Beautiful classical music floats in, transporting us to New York City in 1958, where a cigarette is lit in the dark, illuminating and drawing our gaze into the world of painter Mark Rothko, played with a true intellectual force by Lindsay G. Merrithew (Berkeley Street’s Skylark). He studies, contemplating his creation with a trained, focused eye. He stops the approaching suit with a raised hand and the question, “What do you see?” He urges this young man, Ken, a young painter who will soon be invited to become his assistant, to get in close and let the work wrap its arms around your senses; to really “lean into it“, in the same way we all find ourselves doing at Toronto’s The Theatre Center for Riot King‘s thoughtful and pulsating production of Red by playwright John Logan (2013’s Peter and Alice).
His instructions cry out for involvement, and Ken, played in earnest and with a focused passion by actor/producer Brendan Kinnon (Riot King’s Suddenly, Last Summer), does just that, giving him and the painting his full attention and devotion, no matter how demanding or demeaning the engagement is. Yet in that sensual stance of overwhelming engagement, he also becomes, gradually, the perfect adversarial foil to this hot-tempered artist. It’s a turning point in Rothko’s illustrious career, mainly because Rothko has been commissioned, quite handsomely, to paint a series of large murals for the high-profiled, very swanky Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s famously designed Seagram Building. Rothko has accepted the creative challenge, and the large check that comes with it, hired a fledging artists, Ken, as his assistant, to help him get through the project; to mix paint, stretch canvases, fetch take away meals, and to be, basically, the recipient of Rothko’s endless intellectual and combative ruminations on art, literature, philosophy, and the meaning of both Red and black.
“That’s Yates,” he states, dismissively, followed quickly by “who you haven’t read.” And with that pompous statement, passion and intellectualism get stirred up together in an epic battle and rapturous moan. It’s a profoundly pulsating piece of art, this production, as directed by set designer Kenzia Dalie (Panoply Theatre’s Clowns Reading Shakespeare), who manages to deliver this complication and chaos with a radiant palette of dark colors and complex feelings. As self-absorbed and bullying as Mark Rothko was, especially to this assistant, we never can deny the class of trauma and idealism that lives inside this performance. It flows out of Merrithew’s Rothko, painted in shades of obsessive intellectual conflict and the fear of being seen as some sort of downward spiraling commodity like Picasso or Pollock; a living legend past his prime and relevance, signing menus for meals, or watch his life’s work being assigned as color-coordinated pieces of fashionable and expensive property to hang over the mantel. That’s a fate worse than death, he imagines, maybe much like Pollock or Picasso.
We see and hear the supreme battle for a balance between the ideals and metaphoric differences of Nietzsche’s Apollo and Dionysus, yelled out in overbearing monologues about the opposing forces in art and culture; reason and emotion, order and chaos. Merrithew’s Rothko steeps his own conflicted sense of self in this forever state of verbal intellectual superiority. Basking and pulsating in it, until the once-restrained apprentice grows up into an articulate opponent, determined to stand up to the master in this brutal war against the future of art, throwing back ideas and re-framings at Rothko like Pollock splatters of paint on an old canvas. Kinnon’s Ken subtly but solidly shape shifts in color and stature, courtesy of some strong and thoughtful costuming by Kathleen Welch (Riot King’s SAMCA) and subtle shifts in light by designer Kit Norman (Bowties’ Fun Home), becoming someone who decides that “nevermind” can not be the answer he gives anymore when they disagrees. About where art, Pop art in particular, is heading, and that Rothko will be dealt the same deadly blow by the new breed of pop artists, in the same manner that he admittedly did to the cubist artists that were all the rage before him. These are the warring landscapes Ken decides to stand tall upon and die for. And the effect is hypnotic.
The debate over color and the road ahead is a compelling and intoxicating one, especially when the concept of ‘black’ becomes the center of debate. Visually, the piece is dynamically staged, bringing staged clues to the forefront, teasing a future which is already known to us. The fact that on February 25, 1970, at the age of 66, Rothko’s assistant found the artist dead on the kitchen floor, covered in blood. He had overdosed on some sort of barbiturates, so that the cutting of himself deep in an artery with a razor blade would be painless but permanent. And director Dalie wisely gives us an edgy, dark nod to what is lying ahead for the man for a brief, alarming second that vibrates with intensity. Rothko, by his own hand, had joined a long list of abstract expressionists who left the world with that same broad, deadly, red stroke. Suicide had already taken artist Arshile Gorky in 1948, and Jackson Pollock, as discussed inside the well-written Red, was killed in a possibly suicidal drunken car crash in 1956. Same for the sculptor David Smith in 1965. Rothko seemed to be on a different road leading somewhere towards survival and success, structuring himself, or maybe presenting himself as more of a wise, intellectual career artist that had weight and meaning in a meaningless frame. But the Seagram Murals were branding him in a different, harsher light, as seen here, as a bit of an ego-driven fraud, turning his intellectual extremism of abstract expressionism into something more like a commodity; profitable, desired, and God forbid, pretty enough to hang above your sofa.
History tells us the eventual outcome, but Red cleverly gives us a unique prequel and powerful window into his well-curated, windowless studio and the conflicted, closed-down mind of a legendary artist. In the darkest of twisted turns, the famous Seagram Murals, denied to the elegant eatery in a sharply portrayed phone call we are privy to, arrived in London for display at the Tate Gallery on the very day of his suicide. How black and poetic is that framing?
“Ten per cent of one’s time,” instructs Rothko, “is putting paint on canvas – the rest is waiting.” But the waiting game in Riot King’s masterful application of Red is nothing close to tedious. It’s tense and dynamic, with blocks of bold color being overwhelmed and swallowed by the darkness within, and the opposing vantage points regarding art and commerce unpacked in shades that darken over time. But “let’s get away from all this and paint,” he cries at a moment of heightened rapture. Rothko and Ken stand before a blank canvas and begin to slap on an undercoat with a radical energy that truly does feel like the clash of Gods and demons going into an endless battle against the world, not each other. The two men go at their shared task with a heightened abandonment, aimed at keeping those daring and threatening barbarians at the locked gate, and in that one startling moment, we almost can imagine and see (and feel) a glimpse of balance and harmony in the dried patch of Red.
Straddling theory and practice, the highlight of Riot King’s production is all the chattering, barking, and eating that takes place between these two, and maybe more so between the outside world and the ego and intellectualism of Rothko. It’s the sharpness and harshness in those last few moments of conflict when Logan’s Red, as painted by director Dalie, finds its core and its tragedy. We might not truly believe that the true Rothko would have tolerated such a harsh, yet accurate personal attack by an assistant, but Merrithew makes the moment hang real and dry deep, while maintaining the man and the artist’s essence and pride. His realization is authentic and held tight within his self-absorbed ego, understanding but not permitting it to shift the power dynamic within his studio. We listen to the phone call and see its result, on both the assistant and his own sense of being, and ultimately, his cultural significance. “Don’t you ever tire of telling people what art is?” asks the young, idealistic painter and assistant in a moment of exasperation. Yet inside this strongly painted production, we most definitely don’t tire of watching and hearing it. It’s as layered as the canvas that hangs center stage, and all we want to do throughout is lean in and let it wrap itself around us, haunting us and working its magic on us in ways we can’t truly explain.
