The towering genius and caprices of Mark Rothko provided onetime Chicagoan John Logan with a large canvas that ultimately proved profitable.
Logan’s “Red” took home the Tony Award for best play in 2010 and was last seen here in 2011 at the Goodman.
Now Redtwist Theatre, which has carved a niche of sorts by reimagining plays first seen on large local stages for its own intimate space, tackles the dichotomies and debates in Logan’s play under Steve Scott’s direction.
But despite admirable performances from Brian Parry as Rothko and Aaron Kirby as his challenging fictional assistant, Ken, “Red” doesn’t benefit from closer examination. The didactic nature of the debates feels smaller, the stakes lower.
The play unfolds between 1958-59, when Rothko was working on a commission to paint murals for New York’s Four Seasons restaurant.
The fictional Ken has been sent to help him mix paints, fetch coffee and serve as the sounding board for the older artist’s litany of complaints about the emerging pop artists Ken admires.
Kirby’s Ken, who actually has a greater claim to personal tragedy in many ways than his mentor (despite the latter’s early exhortation to “be a human being for once in your life”), challenges Rothko’s rabbinical (and self-pitying), domineering nature.
In a way, this is really Ken’s play, and Kirby nails the character’s mix of eager-to-please precocity and old-soul steadiness.
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But this is a work that tends to rely on pithy epigrams, rather than build a sturdy narrative arc about a young artist’s awakening and an old artist’s raging against the dying of the light.
The paintings — credited to Allie Meece, with a consultant credit to Yeon Kyung (Charlotte) Cha — don’t have the room to resonate that they did on the Goodman stage, where they towered over the actors and audience alike. Zoe Mikel-Stites’ lighting does give them an agreeable luminous quality, and Eric Luchen’s set provides a mini-simulacrum of a loft studio.
It’s not their fault that Logan’s “Red” needs a bigger platform in order for us to overlook the script’s flaws and to believe that Rothko the man was ultimately undone by Rothko the artist.
2.5 STARS
Through March 8, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.; $30-$35 at 773-728-7529 or redtwist.org