Intellectually Intense Drama

RED

by John Logan

"Silence is so accurate."


"These pictures deserve compassion."


Rothko:  "Now tell me, what do you see?  
Ken:  "Red."

Yesterday I attended a production of John Logan's Tony Award-winning play Red at the Goodman Theatre.  Directed by Robert Falls and starring Edward Gero as Mark Rothko and Patrick Andrews as Ken, his apprentice/assistant.  This was a brilliant and scintillating intellectual tour de force for the actors as Logan drew upon a famous moment in the life of  Mark Rothko to explore the nature of the artist and creativity.  Alongside this exploration was the juxtaposition of the relationship between Rothko as mentor and Ken as apprentice.  Their relationship metamorphosized over the scenes representing the passage of two years in their lives.  From a nervous somewhat intimidated young man in the first scene Ken reaches a point when he demonstrates that he has learned from the master in the climactic scenes.  The sorcery demonstrated by Rothko consisted of a foundation of intellect with a patina of bravura bullying whose shell is finally pierced by both his apprentice and his own penchant for meditating upon the meaning of art and his life in art.  The dialog was intense with moments of relief when Rothko meditated on his art, but even in these moments the intensity built as the  short (100 minute) play built inexorably to its climax.  The climax was all the more powerful because it combined the impact of several levels of the story -- the artist and his art - his life in art, the artist and his patrons, and the artist and his apprentice.  Brilliantly acted, with engaging music -- staging that highlighted the art and culminated with a breathtaking use of lighting to end the play.  I cannot remember the last time I was moved both intellectually and emotionally by a drama as much as I was by Goodman's production of RED.

A Play About Friends - and Best Friends

The Homosexuals
by Philip Dawkins

Another Saturday evening and it is time to take in another play.  This week I attended a performance of The Homosexuals presented by About Face Theatre at the Victory Gardens Theater on North Lincoln Avenue.  The sold-out audience that I joined saw a play about a young gay man from Iowa who arrives in Chicago at the beginning of the first decade of the twenty-first century with literally nothing, no place to stay, no job, no friends and, importantly, no support from his family back in Iowa.  But he meets another young man in a candy shop and is invited to a party at which he meets a group of people who will become his friends - some best friends - for the the decade.  The playwright presents the story through vignettes in the life of the boy, Evan (played by Patrick Andrews), told in reverse chronological order.  It is a tribute to Patrick's acting ability that he succeeds in convincingly making the gradual transition from the first scene set in 2010 to the final one which depicts his arrival at the party in 2000 as a nervous young man from Iowa.  Nervous though he surely is, but he knows himself well enough to have made it to Chicago even as he still has difficulty discussing this knowledge with others.  The rest of the ensemble under the direction of Bonnie Metzgar was excellent as they also captured the changing momentum as scene by scene Evan's relationship with his friends changed and as his experience with some of them as lovers changed as well.  I was also impressed with the seamless scene changes that had the look of quiet ballets of movement as the scenes were set up.  
Prior to attending the play I had heard it compared favorably with Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, an  ensemble about gay men from an earlier and very different era (an era I remember well as I saw the film version as a young gay man in college).  But after seeing the play performed I found myself comparing it to Terrence McNally's 1994 play, Love! Valour! Compassion!  The relationships depicted seemed much more like the latter play although this too is from a different era albeit one closer to our own.  Dawkins even incorporates a reference to it as part of Evan's somewhat nervous comments about his background at the party where he encounters or rather is inundated by the gayness and gaiety of his new friends.  This play successfully incorporates references to contemporary gay life and in doing so provides a marker for gay culture of the Millennials (born after 1980) while entertaining those of us from earlier generations with witty dialogue and plenty of laughter.