Writer: Cian Griffin
Director: Jason Moore
If you want to know about a great artist, pair them up with an ingenu. It worked for John Logan, whose Red created a character study of abstract artist Mark Rothko, as seen through the eyes of a fictional assistant.
Writer Cian Griffin’s subject is a Rothko contemporary, although one whose life and name have been somewhat overshadowed by that of her husband, fellow artist Jackson Pollock. Lee Krasner was an established member of the New York School when she married. By the time of the late 1960s, when Lee is set, her husband, “Pol,” has been dead for some 13 years. She has long since claimed the Long Island barn studio he used as her own and is painting in her own style once more.
Helen Goldwyn’s Lee is irascible, especially when local grocery delivery boy Hank (Will Bagnall) interrupts her flow. Hank is about to return to art school in New York, and asks Lee for her opinion on the sketches he has taken over the summer. Goldwyn gets, and gives, a lot out of the grumpy abstractist’s occasionally unkind takedowns of the literal sketches, later coming alive when she finds some of his “doodles”.
Griffin affords Goldwyn plenty of room on which to expound Krasner’s philosophy around abstract art and how, for her, the resultant painting is a record of the activity of painting as much as (if not more than) a final static image. There are periods where Bagnall serves more as a prompt than a character foil, nudging Lee either to open up or change direction, but they work well together in the main. This is especially true after Bagnall’s Hank opens up about the loss of his father, the grocery store owner who may or may not have had an early Jackson Pollock in his attic, taken in payment for outstanding bills years prior.
But while Krasner’s own grief is explored – Ian Nicholas’s set design is dominated by a copy of Prophecy, the work that was still on her easel when she heard that Pollock had died in a car crash – that remains overshadowed by her husband. Tom Andrews makes occasional appearances as Jackson Pollock, in roles as various as a ghostly, pedantic critic of Krasner’s style as she paints, as flashbacks to times in their marriage, and even as a prophet, telling Krasner what her legacy will be.
One can hardly blame Griffin for including him in some way. For a man who dominated Krasner’s life so much, for good and ill, leaving him out altogether would require a writing style more adept at being able to conjure visions of unseen people through words alone. Here, we share Lee’s irritation at his presence.
Griffin’s script is at its best when it avoids attempts at lecturing. At other times, such as when discussing the paucity of women artists who are as revered as men throughout art history, the mixture of research, exposition and the need to name-drop (as well as mentioning Rothko, the script frequently refers to Willem de Kooning and Peggy Guggenheim) makes its presence felt a little too keenly.
Similarly, the subplot regarding the artwork in Hank’s possession falls short. The supposed origins of the painting and the visceral reaction Lee has to it are intended to be another spur to maintain the play’s momentum. Alas, the mystery is rather too obvious – like an episode of Fake or Fortune where the truth is revealed before the opening credits roll. Although Bagnall does a good job at trying to portray a young man who cannot see the painting’s true origins, the script requires what is an otherwise intelligent young man to become extremely dumb, doing a great disservice to his character.
In contrast, Goldwyn rises above some of the more mundane lines of dialogue to fully inhabit the role of an expressionist who initially broke into the “old boy’s club” of the New York School, only to fade into the shadow of her more famous husband. Her performance makes the piece sing in places where Griffin’s script merely hums along, revealing layers that continue to fascinate. As with Krasner’s art, it is the act of Goldwyn’s creative process that makes the final artwork feel alive.
Runs until 18 October 2025
