Theatre: November 2012 Archives

The latest production at the Segal Centre in Montreal is a play called Red.

It's a six-time Tony Award-winning drama, directed here by award-winning veteran of the Stratford Festival, Martha Henry.

Red tells the story of artist Mark Rothko, who was a pioneer of the abstract expressionist movement.

Rothko made a name for himself in the 1950s with his 'multiform' paintings - huge canvasses painted with rectangles of colour and light that seemed to float off the canvas. Then in 1958, he was offered one of the biggest commissions in the history of modern art - a set of murals for the Seagram building in New York.

That's where Red begins. Randy Hughson plays the artist, and Jesse Aaron Dwyre plays his young assistant. They joined Elizabeth Robertson in studio.

 

Centaur Theatre's latest production is set in Boston's tough working class neighborhood known as "Southie", and the accents are as strong as the attitude in the play Good People.

A single mother is fired from her job as a cashier, and she turns to her former boyfriend for help but he's managed to make a better life for himself and now lives in the wealthy Chestnut Hill. Their beliefs and worlds collide in a story that looks at how the class system can sometimes play out in the U.S.

Sonali Karnick spoke with the director of Good People, Roy Surette.