Art gets talked about a lot in John Logan’s “Red.” And it gets made as well: The play’s two characters — abstract expressionist star Mark Rothko and an assistant named Ken — mix paint, stretch a canvas, prime it.
The downside is, we get to watch that paint dry.
Set in the late 1950s, the self-important London import that opened on Broadway last night centers on the two years when Rothko (Alfred Molina) worked on murals for the then-new Four Seasons restaurant, designed by Philip Johnson and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The audience stand-in is Ken (Eddie Redmayne), a young painter who apprentices with Rothko and is on the receiving end of endless lectures pronounced in definitive tones. When Rothko delivers aphorisms facing us, lit from below in his darkened studio, it feels like Moses coming up with the Commandments instead of merely receiving them from God.
Rothko is a mentor, inspiration, father figure and bully rolled into one towering package. Molina, his head shaved, has an imposing presence and looms over the rail-thin Redmayne.
The show, directed by Michael Grandage (who staged the Jude Law “Hamlet” on Broadway), is at its most engaging when this physicality takes over and the two men throw themselves into their work. It climaxes in a scene in which they slather maroon primer on a canvas in a competitive, quasi-sexual frenzy — Rothko even lights up a cigarette afterward.
Christopher Oram’s evocation of Rothko’s studio, bathed in an underworld-like murk, is also striking.
But oh, the empty verbiage, the showoff name-dropping we have to wade through.
After enduring Rothko’s pontificating for two years, Ken finally blows his top. He lashes out at his employer, spitting out exactly what we’ve been thinking for the past hour: that Rothko is a pompous prig, that he may act all high and mighty but he got a fat check to paint for the rich patrons of an expensive restaurant. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what Logan has been doing, passing off grand statements as deep thoughts.
But they’re only a smoke screen, and “Red” eventually emerges not so much as a sophisticated contemplation on art as a conventional coming-of-age tale.
“This is the first time you’ve existed,” Rothko tells his underling after the big outburst. At last, Ken is a man. Can we end the show now?
“Red” looks great, and Molina and Redmayne give superb performances. But the play never takes off because it flatters its audience’s intellect instead of challenging it. Blathering about art doesn’t automatically result in art — or entertainment, for that matter.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com