THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
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The Young Vic under Kwame Kwei-Armah goes from strength to strength and this starry world premiere is the kind of thing the National might have nabbed in better times. It's probably headed for Broadway and a quick movie version, considering it is written by the acclaimed screenwriter Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything, Bohemian Rhapsody).
There are strong echoes of Red, another artist bio-play, which started at the Donmar and made Eddie Redmayne's name in the US. Here, stars Paul Bettany (WandaVision) and Jeremy Pope (Pose, Hollywood) have taken time out from their busy LA careers for a piece which fits them both like a glove.
McCarten explores the relatively unknown fact that Andy Warhol (Bettany) and Jean Michel Basquiat (Pope) had a brief but intense friendship which even involved an artistic collaboration. Brought together by their canny Swiss agent Bruno (Alec Newman) who, as ever, saw dollar signs and a chance to reposition Warhol, the play explores this rather unlikely pairing.
By this time Warhol hadn't actually painted anything for 20 years, resorting instead to ploughing out screen prints and going to parties. He was the perfect King of Nothingness for the uber shallow world of Manhattan celebrity fashionistas – a blank sheet on which those, mostly, lost souls projected their neuroses. In a hilarious riff of name-dropping, he recounts one typical evening for him.
Basquiat, on the other hand, all youthful cockiness and with the coiled energy of a break dancer, was definitely on the way up. He had little respect for Warhol but reluctantly agreed to the meeting. Bettany hilariously captures how Warhol, when forced, approached the canvas as if he's been cornered by a wild beast. Such was his fear of applying actual paint to a canvas again after years of settling for an industrial approach and cynically accepting that it was now just all about money in any case "We're already ignoring everything, why don't we ignore art too". Warhol is pensive and his art is studied. By contrast Basquiat, to a blaring soundtrack of Miles Davis records, would attack his canvases with gusto, working free form and seeing where the muse takes him. For him, paintings had a supernatural element.
Dramatic reconstructions of the creative process are inevitably risible and thankfully McCarten keeps them to a minimum, focusing instead on the pair's emotional terrain. Basquiat wasn't very verbal so it's dubious that he'd have opened up as much as it appears and McCarten has Warhol obsessively filming the young man, until the latter finally flips. Warhol, still as neurotic as a teenager about his physical shortcomings, was the eternal kid outside the party looking in, even when in later life he was IN the best parties. He's parsimonious and notes every cab fare while Basquiat keeps thousands in cash stashed in his fridge and sprinkles it like confetti.
Kwei-Armah's direction keeps it wonderfully light while deftly exploring the pain of the racism which Basquiat endured (a close friend being battered to death by the cops). He elicits great performances from the two leads which are packed with telling details. There's a heart-breaking sweetness to Pope's interpretation of Basquiat and Bettany manages, too, to soften the brittle cynicism of Warhol's self-loathing and give us a glimpse of the emotional hinterland beneath.
Anna Fleischle's designs expertly evoke the demi-monde of the East Village art world of the 80s and the clothes are perfect judged. As they say in Variety "this has legs".
