A sure way to win an artist’s affection, or at least respect, is to understand some aspect of what they’re trying to do with their work. Whether it’s a particular trick with light and shadow or an emotional reaction they were hoping to inspire, the great unspoken desire for all artists is for someone else to see what they see.
Salt Lake Acting Company’s current production of “Red,” running now through March 4, offered such a perfect understanding of the terror and majesty of art that it brought tears to my eyes. Ostensibly a series of discussions between Mark Rothko and his assistant, the production brings the adoration, anger, passion and terror into vivid, screaming, searing life with every moment onstage. If you’ve ever wanted to know the hope and dread that move inside an artist’s heart (or a writer’s, or a composer’s ….), the things they never speak of but believe with an absolute ferocity that sometimes astonishes even them, or even the ridiculous depth of love an artist has for their creations, then watch SLAC’s “Red.” Every word felt absolutely true.
“Selling a painting is like sending a blind child into a room full of razor blades,” says Rothko’s character at one point in the play.
As Rothko, actor Morgan Lund is a revelation, and together with director Keven Mhyre fill the stage with such ferocity that even the most sweeping, dramatic hyperbole feels like desperate prayer rather than hollow bluster. Ted Powell has less to work with as Ken, the assistant, but by the end we can see the fire beginning to burn inside him as well. And when he answers the same question at the end of the play that he was asked at the beginning, he imbues a single word with a gentle, heartbreaking understanding. For artists, there’s no greater gift.
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