Red at Theatre Arlington

Master abstract expressionist Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art - a series of murals for New York’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that follow, Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. This raw and provocative portrait of an artist’s ambition and vulnerability brings to light the meaning of art, integrity, commerce and audience, and pushes both characters to confront their fears, irrelevance and meaninglessness as each struggle to discover his place in the shifting cultural and political world of the late 1950s.