Can't find a thread for this but what do we think of this? I can't say I'm inspired by Rothko's paintings but will his life make a good play?
The cast are the only attractive thing for me at the moment. Eddie Redmayne impressed me in Tess of the Durbevilles on BBC but I am yet to see him on stage.
Are there any more cast to be announced or is it a two-hander?
Not much time left to book...looks like it's almost sold out and I still know precious little about it....
Any info to above qs appreciated!

Although I tend to book everything at the Donmar, Eddie Redmayne was excellent in "Now or Later" at the Royal Court last year. A fantastically sensitive, compelling performance in what might otherwise have seemed a dull play. Hope this helps you decide.

http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/archive_detail.asp?play=521

If it helps, RED is by John Logan who wrote the movie The Aviator and adapted the Sweeney Todd musical for Tim Burton. Dude can write. Add to that the Grandage/Oram tag-team and Alfred Molina and it's looking promising!

Yeah, I totally agree there. Eddie was wesome in that show and I've booked to see "Red" on the basis of that.

They have released the side stalls seats and side circle
seats for most performances.Picked up two for my next trip
at the end of January.
Bob in NYC

Thanks for this!
I now have a ticket for my favourite side seat, A2, in a few weeks time. I'm hoping that the Grandage/Oram combination will mean that the play isn't too bad, but I know nothing of Mark Rothko!

Well, you can guess what his favourite colour was!

lol whose seen this?

Saw Red last night - nearly gave my ticket to daughter to go with someone else. But it was brilliant - one of the best plays we have seen this year.

Tour de force from Eddie and Alfred Molina, and incredibly well written and gripping, especially as I am not very interested in or knowledgeable about art.

Go see!

Saw this on Friday and thought it was superb. Two men talking about art for 100 minutes doesn't sound too promising, but I was gripped throughout and deeply moved at the end. In fact more moved than I was by Doll's House or Streetcar (but maybe I'm weird).

The play takes place when Rothko is painting his murals for the Seagram Building restaurant. I saw these paintings at the Tate earlier this year (or was it last year), and was blown away by them. Maybe if you don't react to the paintings, you won't like the play as much as I did. Or it might not matter. There's a particularly wonderful scene where they "prime" a canvas to loud opera (Gluck, I think), and end on the floor, exhausted and "bloodied".

Ended about 9.15.

Annie in the stalls and guest,
Sounds great.Just wondering about the set.The usual Donmar concern as
I have first row stalls seats all the way to the side.Will I miss
much and are the paintings projected against the back wall?
Thanks in advance...Bob in NYC

Hi Bob,

The paintings are real canvases, not projections, hung towards the back of the stage. You shouldn't have any problems with sightlines from the stalls. If you're on the right, you'll have Eddie Redmayne leaning over you to get the paint mixes.

Hello Annie,

Thanks...I am sitting on the left side
of the horseshoe.Really excited by this one.
Now if you can reassure me about
The Misanthrope I will forever be in
your debt.Like the actors but not too
sure about Martin Crimp.His adaptations leave me
cold.Also seeing that at the end of Jan.

Take Care...Bob

Very interesting play, especially having seen The Habit of Art. So dramas about a poet, a musician and a painter. I liked the theatricality of it, the priming scene, the moving of the canvases, the ins and outs, all very good, great rhythm in keeping with the theme.

Eddie Redmayne, super [ is it too late for him to be nominated as best supporting, for the Oliviers I'm thinking? Hope not.] Alfred Molina, a bit of a masterclass in those sharp explosions.

I'm very pleased with myself because I just had a run of good plays, some of which I booked as fillers and knew nothing about: Speaking in Tongues, Seize the Day, The Habit of Art [ I did know about] The Priory and this one, Red. And I'm pleased they are contemporary plays. Nice end to the year. Nothing now til The Waste Land, Wilton's beg of Jan.

Red is the new Blue/Orange!

Prior to seeing Red I was struggling to think of what the most outstanding thing I'd seen at the theatre this year was: it turned out that it was the last thing I saw. Red at the Donmar Warehouse is a two hander about the artist Mark Rothko and a fictional apprentice set in 1959 when Rothko was working on a commission to provide artwork for The Four Seasons restaurant at the newly Seagrams Building in New York. Although the abstract expressionist paintings were completed (and most of them exhibited at Tate Modern last year where I saw them; this following Simon Schama's TV documentary about Mark Rothko) they were never hung in their intended location due to Rothko's change of mind and him returning the $35,000 (about £2m in today's money) fee he was paid.

The play pulsates with ideas just as Rothko's paintings are supposed to pulsate and envelope the onlooker. These ideas are given their expression through the spurt of intellectual growth of Rothko's apprentice as he wrestles with the fierce, intense, tortured intellect of his employer in the dark, soulless studio which Rothko inhabits.

John Logan (who I was interested to note did the screenplay for Sweeney Todd) has created a taught, engrossing work that sheds darkness on these unfathomable paintings and gives what may be an authentic voice to what was going on in Rothko's mind. Alfred Molina turns in an unpredictable and volcanic performance as Rothko whilst Eddie Redmayne gives a realistic portrayal of the intimidated apprentice growing into the confrontational intellectual challenger holding his ground, rarely letting Rothko off the hook and never letting Molina steal the scene. They balance each other superbly and this is vital for the success of the production. The lighting is also interesting, helping the canvases to pulsate and sometimes even making the audience uncomfortable intruders on the battle within the studio.

Red is similar to Blue/Orange in as much that it is an ongoing exchange of ideas, opinions and arguments. Since there are only two characters who are either consistent or show consistent growth in their lines of thought it is not as complex or as demanding as Blue/Orange. None the less it is by far the best play I have seen in years, outclassing raved-about stuff such as That Face and it left August: Osage County in Orange County. After leaving the theatre and getting half-way down St Martin's Lane I had to turn around and go back to the Donmar just to buy the script. I've never bought the script of a play I've just seen before in my life (I'm not a theatre professional). And I'd already read it by the time the train got me home. A truly brilliant piece of theatre.

I completely agree with the high praise for this play. It was brilliant. I saw it on Saturday and sat in the front row of the stalls, to the extreme left side of the stage (i.e. towards the back of the Donmar stage). I would say that the side seats have several advantages over the forwards-facing seats for this production; for example, at the start you can watch Alfred Molina's face gazing into the Rothko painting as the audience arrives. Also, when Eddie Redmayne is asked to look at the paintings and during the intense painting of the red canvas, you can see the expressions of the actors more easily than I imagine from the forward-facing seats.

The set and lighting are very very good and the mood of the studio is well-captured. When the lights are put up to reveal the bright white light of the overhead lights the whole Donmar space is lit up in an artificial white light and this contrasts startlingly with the moody dim lighting that Rothko prefers (Indeed I believe that the lighting at the Tate Modern in the Rothko room is dimmed according to Rothko's wishes that his paintings are viewed in such conditions).

The acting is just superb. Molina is mesmerising as the explosive, deeply troubled man; his worries about art and how his paintings viewed are clearly expressed and I really felt for him. Eddie Redmayne is also brilliant and is more than a match in the acting stakes. It's a brilliantly casted two-hander and I can't see it being bettered by any other actors.

It's around 1 hr 45 mins but the time flew by and I was utterly engrossed in the interplay between the actors. Furthermore, this is a physical production. Frames are hammered, canvasses stretched, paints mixed and the actors exhaust themeselves in a scene where they furiously paint a canvas, weaving in and out of each other, thrashing red paint around. A word of warning, as I was sat at the front on the extreme left, the 'paint' splashes onto the stage within inches of your legs! Whether anyone will get splashed I don't know!

By the end I was moved more than I thought I would be. I might even visit the Tate Modern's Rothko room now. After thinking they were nothing more than blocks of colour, I now regard them more highly and can see what Rothko was trying to achieve.

My play of the year, and another hit for the Donmar.

Looking back at the posts, I think I was in the same seats as Bob from NYC. If so, you'll have a great time as they're perfect.

Thanks JonnyBoy for the postscript.I have seats A40/41---hope they were the
same as yours as you make a great case for the side stalls seats.Looking
forward to this.I am seeing a matinee of THE HABIT OF ART on the same
day that I am going to see RED.Should be an interesting day.

Wishing you and everyone else on this discussion board a very MERRY
CHRISTMAS ( for everyone and anyone who celebrates it) and
a HAPPY and HEALTHY 2010.

Bob in NYC

I'll try to overlook that....

Yes, ours were A40/41 too. So, rest assured they're great seats for this production. Just don't stretch your legs out onto the stage in the painting scene!

I wonder if this play is the only one ever to have a cast whose names contain the play's title! ...just a thought. Merry Christmas!

There was a Sandra Kater in Cats twelve years ago; she was from the Netherlands and kat is, unsurprisingly, the Dutch for cat.

There was also a Lucinda Funny-Thing-Happened-On-The-Way-To-The-Forum, but she was in Sweeney Todd.

Matthew, put the bottle down now.

Saw the matinee of this today. Wow. Seriously good. Well-written, beautifully acted, dealing almost entirely with ideas (one character complains at one point that the other never inquires anything about his personal life, but neither does the playwright really), excitingly, yet simply staged. Eddie Redmayne was a revelation - a performance I will remember for some time.

Ah! Really excited to find this thread. I'm glad you all seem to have enjoyed it.
I'm going to see one of the last performances (seat A3). Terribly excited to finally see Eddie on stage. And I've just been watching the 'In Discussion with Molina..' videos on the Donmar website.
Cannot wait.

I'm going on 30th Jan....if it's stopped snowing by then! Also looking forward to it...a sort of belated Xmas treat to myself for coping with all the present buying, food shopping and being nice to husband's batty relatives! I reckon I could write a good play about that.....! No just go and see a good one as reward!

For me, each fascinating discussion within it proved somehow greater than the play as a whole, but regardless, it's an exquisitely toned production, each scene beautifully staged before another beguilingly lit painting, and Eddie Redmayne is once again off the scale utterly brilliant. Why aren't we seeing his Hamlet amid all the others?

What the.... I saw it and thought it was pants. The entry page on Wikipedia for Rothko was more interesting than this play/production. Too much 'shouty' flat two-dimensional acting imo.

Interesting point!

Maybe that's what made me buy the script.

Because he's waiting for me to graduate so I can direct it, obviously.

Enjoyed this one today. Excellent performances from both actors and I thought the ending was very touching. Those of you who know me will know that I am prone to the odd tear or two at the Donmar and I almost lost it at the end.... so on the tear-ometer it was a hit. I agree that the discussions on their own seemed greater than the whole..but still a fine production. Full marks to the lighting team. I am now off to explore references about other painters mentioned in the play...
Tha lady next to me said she "really enjoyed it" despite having slept through nearly all of it! At least she didn't snore!
London beautiful with an icing sugar dusting of snow....ah happy days!

Saw this tonight! LOVED it! I had no idea what it was about at all before I went in but really great and easy to follow.

You had a good day, Mark E.

I bought the play last month and haven't read it. Saw it last night and had to read it and re-read it immediately! The play is amazing. I have to agree it's a good play but the discussion that the play brings out is definitely more interesting and intriguing! I expected a top-class production from the Donmar and it did not disappoint.
Also, the performances were... I'm just speechless. I thought/expected Alfred Molina to be the better actor but I thought Eddie Redmayne absolutely outshone him! Not that Alfred is bad in ANY way, in fact he was amazing, but from the moment Eddie came in as Ken through those doors, I just cannot take my eyes off him. His acting was so detailed... that breakdown, the subtleness, great stuff. I haven't seen Ben Whishaw onstage yet (god I hope it can be soon!) but I think Eddie might just be one of the best actors of this generation I've seen ~ I think both actors deserve Olivier nominations at the very least!!!!!

Hoping to queue for day seats for next week... anyone know when I should arrive? Are there alot of people queuing up? What seats do they offer for day seats? thanks in advance ~

I have to add that throughout watching the play, I have the idea of Eddie as Hamlet! I think he should definitely play Hamlet!

Felix I queued for dayseats yesterday got there at about 8:40 and there were 10 people in front or me. By the time they started selling there was atleast another 20 people behind me, maybe more. I got B45 in the circle (right on the edge) but it was a great seat!

And ye Lynette, I felt so fulfilled coming home yesterday on the train, like I had really experienced something. Loved it. Next up - Enron/Little Dog Laughed!

Shittt.... 8.40! that's EARLY!!!! I hope I can get tickets!!!
I saw Little Dog Laughed, I really enjoyed it, it's light & fun and ... hot. But everyone else on this board seemed to hated it.

As a veteran Donmar dayseater, I hope you'll permit me a disbelieving snort at the idea of 8.40am being considered early.

I'm a little bit sad to hear of the popularity though; I'm planning on dayseating Jerusalem next weekend and had thought about swinging by the Donmar after to see if there was any standing space available for the other performance. Now it's looking distinctly like I should be doing it the other way round - dayseating Red first before swinging by Jerusalem - but Jerusalem is the one I really really want to see (again XD), so I'm not sure I'm willing to do that. Hohum. :/

Jerusalem was still selling the dayseats in the dress circle just before curtain up!

And 8:40 was REALLY early for me haha. I had to get up at 7:15, managed to burn my toast so just had beans, quick shower, 20 minute walk to the station, half hour on the train to charing cross then quick walk to the Donmar! But ye was worth it haha.

Next one I can see myself dayseating for is Polar Bears. Looks very good.

Well, you did the Jerusalem/Red dayseat combo on a Saturday and that worked neatly for you, right? Worth taking the gamble of it working again this Saturday? I guess if the worst came to it then I could always do Jerusalem another time, but as I'd be getting a ticket for someone else as well, she might not think so much of the plan. HMMM. Someone else make my decisions for me! ;D

Well if you don't mind standing you could do Red 2nd. I got there at 10:15 two weeks before but they only had standing which I didn't want. But Jerusalem has like 25 seats per performance, im sure if you went at 11Am they would still have tickets.

I don't mind standing, but it is Red's final day, so I expect it to be a little busier than usual. Well, I'll see what my cohort reckons, but thank you! You've been most helpful!

What order do you plan to see them in, Weez? I think I'd find 3 hours of Jerusalem a bit hard going after seeing a Red matinee; plus you might miss the last train home.

Annie

Well I definitely did not see this one coming!!!

http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Donma...ay_Run_20100131

Ohhh, Jerusalem first! But I've done all three parts of Henry VI in a single day, so it'd take a lot to kill me. XD No fear about the last train either, I'll be staying in London all weekend.

Molina lives in the US, better known there than here now I reckon. Good for Mr Redmayne...another one will be snatched to the movie industry no doubt.....

No, see Red in the afternoon, then J in the evening. Your mind will be reeling after Red, a bit, but J is the better play. J will set you thinking all night and beyond...

Wow I did NOT see the Broadway transfer coming! Good for both of them! Eddie has done quite a few movies with some pretty big Hollywood names... hope he can definitely establish his name now!

I just checked the NYC prices... they are MUCH more expensive than the London prices... Donmar must be making some good money!

A well-deserved transfer!
This was my play of 2009.