National Theatre Live: Red

1958. Mark Rothko has taken a large commission: a series of paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York. It is the most money he has ever been offered. A young assistant comes into the studio: Ken. The play is nothing but the two men talking in that studio. What colour is, what a painting is for, what a painting means on the wall of a restaurant. Rothko talks and Ken listens; then Ken starts talking, and says the thing Rothko has not said to himself. Nick Morris directs the recording; ninety minutes. It is John Logan's play, with Alfred Molina as Rothko and Alfred Enoch as Ken, staged by Michael Grandage. National Theatre Live records stage productions and shows them in cinemas; this is the 2018 London staging. Rothko in the end returned the commission and gave the money back.