Humour is not readily associated with the abstract expressionist painters, but in Prime Cut’s production of John Logan’s award-winning play, comic timing turns some of Mark Rothko’s grave pronouncements into quips.
Working in his Manhattan studio on the murals commissioned for the Seagram building in 1958, Rothko (Patrick O’Kane) employs an assistant Ken (Thomas Finnegan), who becomes the target of his tirades. Director Emma Jordan keeps both men constantly moving, emphasising the labour of stretching vast canvases and heaving them across the floor and, in one brilliant scene, priming a canvas together as if it is a blood-soaked ritual.
Ciaran Bagnall’s design for the studio highlights its theatricality: the low, artificial light that Rothko needed, and the chapel-like roof. Here, immersed in saturated colour fields, the artist seals himself away from the vulgarity of those who might view a Rothko as just another object to be consumed.
O’Kane completely inhabits the role, expressing the contradictions of the great radical who is also a conservative, becoming paranoid about the rising generation of pop artists. The subtlety of his performance lifts the slightly one-sided script, which initially has the signposting that besets biographical drama, in this case foreshadowing Rothko’s suicide in 1970.
Gradually the balance shifts as the pair begin to spar, with Finnegan capturing Ken’s resistance. Challenging Rothko on every level, from the aesthetic to the ethical, he finally questions his integrity in accepting the lucrative Seagram commission. More than the ideas about the value of art, at the core of this production is a generational tussle, movingly portrayed.
• At the Lyric, Belfast, until 22 April. Box office: 028-9038 1081.
