RED by Blank Space Theatre

“A brush of pain“

Reviewer: Walter Chan
Performance: 11 July 2014

An intensive character study of the expressionist artist Mark Rothko, Red paints with bold strokes, but ends up being overwhelmed by its subject matter.

Gavin Yap and Daniel Jenkins carry the 90-minute play in its entirety. Photograph: Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay

How do you define abstract art, let alone explain it?

If you are unable to get past my opening question, then this is not the play for you. Written by John Logan and directed by Samantha Scott-Blackhall, Red is a mind-bending piece of theatre that blitzes past philosophy, art, culture and the meaning of life, all in 90 minutes (no intermission).

Sounds too ambitious? Well, it definitely was.

Make no mistake, this is as much a show about art as it is about an artist. Loosely based on the life of Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, Red paints a picture of an artist’s vision tainted by bitter cynicism as he struggles to keep up with a world that has left him behind in the dust.

However, the play is so steeped in the artistic context of the late 1950s that anyone unacquainted with the subject matter would simply be lost between the rapid back-and-forth between Rothko (Daniel Jenkins) and his assistant Ken (Gavin Yap). Both of them barrel through a tumult of names that include Nietzsche, Matisse and Jackson Pollock, and spout choice quotes aplenty as if reciting from a library of book sleeves. Trying to keep up with the breakneck pace at which they flitted from topic to topic proved to be an enormous strain on my brain.

Which is a letdown, because the extra-dramatic visual elements (Wong Chee Wai’s set design and James Tan’s lighting) combine to form a stunning visual palette that effortlessly morphs across different moods. Kudos must be given to the duo for their meticulous eye for detail even within the small staging space, which peeled back the set layer by layer with every scene change. The result was a visually arresting spectacle that, thankfully, kept my eyes busy while my ears got bored from trying to keep up with the hurricane of over-intellectualisation going on.

It is no fault of the actors though. Jenkins lumbers about the stage as the brash and belligerent Rothko with a fierce passion for his work, while Yap serves as the archetypal foil to pave the way for character development. It becomes painfully clear as the play drags on that Ken is little more than an outward vocalisation of Rothko’s inner turmoil. I could not help feeling sorry for Yap, who struggled valiantly to breathe life into the lines (that were already bordering on hackneyed). But with dialogue this stifled, no amount of acting could save it.

“You have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting,” Rothko muses at one point. Ironically, for a play about a man who wears tragedy as a badge of honour, there was nothing honourable about the tragedy of a compelling story that could have been.