It’s nine years since John Logan’s Red premiered
at the Donald and Margot Warehouse, and while I would have happily seen it again at the time its hit transfer to New York meant it never had a further life in London. Michael Grandage has finally been able to rectify this with a revival at Wyndham’s, and has even managed to bring back his original star, Alfred
Molina, to play the artist Mark Rothko. The play is the imagined story of the painting of The Seagram Murals, a sequence of red
and black paintings originally commissioned to decorate the elite Four Seasons restaurant. It immediately sounds like an unlikely home for a collection of moody, ominous canvases, and Rothko did in the end withdraw from the commission. In a way Red is the story of how he comes to that decision, as he bats ideas back and forth with a fictional assistant, Ken, played by Startled Giraffe Alfred
Enoch. The role was originally played by Eddie Red
mayne, because Grandage is seemingly committed to only casting Red with actors who have red
in their names.
