Goodman Theatre’s fiery ‘Red’ ignites the stage

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(l to r) Rothko (Edward Gero) takes his frustration out on Ken (Patrick Andrews) after visiting the restaurant where his paintings will be displayed in "Red" at the Goodman Theatre.

Updated: December 2, 2011 2:11PM

‘What do you see?”

That is the cut-to-the-chase opening line in “Red,” John Logan’s bristlingly smart, emotionally fiery 2011 Tony Award-winning play now in its Chicago debut at the Goodman Theatre. To be sure, in the 100 minutes that follow, you will begin to see a great deal more. And no greater compliment can be paid to a drama that is so fully consumed with exploring the act of painting, the art of looking, the generational shifts of individual vision and public taste, and the complex dynamics of artists’ egos — torn between carrying the grand history of the creative impulse forward, and winning the attention and financial rewards of the moment.

That all-consuming question, “What do you see?” is posed by Mark Rothko (Edward Gero), the brusque, angry, unsettled, monumentally self-involved modernist master whose vast canvases of loosely geometric shapes pulsate with color — reds of almost palpable density defined by great columns of black, and sweeps of dark, rusty brown. And it serves as the first direct challenge to Ken (Patrick Andrews), the boyish young fellow, also a painter, who has arrived at Rothko’s high-ceilinged, dimly lit New York studio (superbly conjured by set designer Todd Rosenthal) in the Bowery to work as his assistant.

Ken will not only be profoundly changed by his encounter with the larger-than-life artist — learning, as we do, to look long and hard enough so that you feel what Rothko describes as “the pulse” of his work — the beat of a heart, the entrance into an inferno, the continual tension between life and death. But he also will serve as the catalyst for what just might be the most crucial decision of Rothko’s career.

The play covers the two-year period of 1958-1959 when Rothko was working on a series of paintings that were to form a mural on the wall of the posh Four Seasons Restaurant in the then new Seagram’s Building, a landmark modernist skyscraper designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Though a prestigious and lucrative commission, the restaurant is hardly “the temple-like” setting Rothko — with his high-minded sense of art, and his enduring outsider, Russian-Jewish immigrant roots — feels is appropriate for serious art.

Acutely aware of how success ruined his peer, Jackson Pollock, and wholly contemptuous of the “pop artists” like Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol already on the rise, Rothko rants and rages and treats Ken shabbily. Yet it is a credit to director Robert Falls and his actors that they make the tense bond that develops between these men’s hearts every bit as important as the sound and fury.

“I am not your rabbi, I am not your father, I am not your shrink, I am not your friend, I am not your teacher — I am your employer,” Rothko warns Ken on his first day on the job. Of course he becomes all those things, and Ken becomes the artistic “son” and challenger Rothko is so reluctant to support and acknowledge.

Gero brings an earthy, gruff, brooding quality to the role of Rothko, admirably avoiding flamboyance in favor of a certain peasant roughness. Andrews, small and whippet-thin, more than holds his own, emerging as a sort of David to Rothko’s Goliath. And as you watch these two figures — hoisting giant canvases onto pulleys, and engaging in a battle of wits and need at every turn — you can almost see the transfusion of spirit and blood between them. A very rich and throbbing current of red.