Nine years ago I’d like to have seen Red at the Donmar. Alfred Molina played Mark Rothko, Eddie Redmayne his assistant (Ken) and Michael Grandage directed. Tant pis, I missed it but it’s on again in the West End now with most of that dream team – Molina and Grandage.
Actually, I probably won’t see it because it reminds me of that dreary French play Art that ran for ever in London. When I saw it my hostess thoughtfully made smoked salmon sandwiches for the interval. There was no interval so, somewhat embarrassingly, she insisted on our having them as a starter in the restaurant afterwards, which was supposed to be my treat; but we digress.
Alfred Molina claims that his greatest extravagance is having his shirts dry-cleaned. I know some of your greatest extravagances: boats, houses in France, racehorses, fast cars, holidays, penny shares, divorce but, as far as I know, not Class A drugs. My greatest extravagance is eating out – it would save me a lot of money if I cooked at home but it’s lovely not to have to wash the pans, as a guest once told me.
When I lived in New York in 1983 I thought it a great extravagance to have my shirts dry-cleaned, albeit on expenses. But back to Red (Red not Bed) at the Wyndhams Theatre. If you splash out on a programme you will see that Richard Mawbey is credited for making the wigs. He’s a smooth operator – there isn’t a wig in the show.
Well of course my favourite blogger refers to when Red was first performed at the DONMAR Warehouse in London. My brief was to make Mr Molina look as much like Mark Rothko as possible. I needed him to have his head shaved so that the wig would show large amounts of scalp through it. Bald caps take hours to do before a show. All went well and he looked like the artist. That was until we all discovered to our horror that in the final scene large amounts of Red paint are flung at a canvas and lots ended up in the wig, after a few shows the hair and foundation had become an unbecoming pink! GRANDAGE and I decided to cut the wig and let Alfred be bald. Too late of course to stop my credit going in the programme. The only other character was played by a young EDDIE REDMAYNE who had great hair. This caused the theatre critic Mark Shenton to observe that while he admired my work enormously, he felt I’d surpassed my self on this one! I’m looking forward to Opening Night tonight..no credit and certainly no wig.