Out of the Margins

John Logan has generously annotated throughout this edition of Red, his play about the painter Rothko and his assistant, set in Rothko’s Bowery studio in the 1950s after he has been commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s Seagram Building. 

First produced by the Donmar Warehouse in 2009, “I wrote the play with this space in mind. My favourite theatre in the world and mirrors the size of Rothko’s studio.” The playwright notes that Stephen Sondheim had urged him to write the play, hence the dedication. And he talks about how the play started for him - he began writing the middle - and how he then had to go back to the beginning. 

There’s a gorgeous insight into the crucial wordless scene, told entirely through movement, where Rothko paints as “our big tap routine… like the big number ending Act One in a musical”. Michael Billington described that scene as “a totally convincing portrait of the artist as a working visionary” (The Guardian). 

John Logan describes Eddie Redmayne’s performance in the play and even draws a picture of Alfred Molina who played Rothko on the title page!