On a spring day in 1931, the lives of nine, young African American teenagers were destroyed. All were pulled from a train destined to Memphis, which each had been riding in search of a new job and a new life. By day’s end, all nine would be jailed in Scottsboro, falsely accused of raping two white girls. Over the next twenty years, there would be multiple trials, retrials, denied pardon applications, and death.

It should not be as powerful as it is. After all, it is just two actors painting a canvas red. And yet, with frenetic classical music, a light projecting the actors' shadows onto the canvas (whose back was to the audience), and the actors’ rapid brush strokes bringing the paint closer and closer to the center, I was mesmerized. This is the genius of John Logan’s Red and its impressive production at Philadelphia Theater Company. Echoing the art of the play’s subject, Mark Rothko, seemingly simple constructs—two actors, a simple set, the painting of a canvas—expand within your view into something extraordinary, something larger than life, something both beautiful and tragic. Stephen Rowe stars as abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Having just accepted a commission for New York City’s Four Seasons Restaurant, he hires on a young assistant Ken (Haley Joel Osment) to assist in his studio. As Rothko immediately makes clear, Ken is there to assist: get cigarettes, assemble canvases, and help with base coats. He is not there to paint or have ideas. But quickly Ken learns he is mainly there to be audience to Rothko’s ego and pontifications.