Spanning an epic four hours, director Łukasz Twarkowski and writer Anka Herbut have produced a piece so sublime and original that it almost defies description. A multilingual feat of monumental cinetheatre, ROHTKO follows the extraordinary life of Mark Rothko, the renowned American painter of Latvian-Jewish descent. To reduce the production to this summary, however, is to ignore the deep meditation on the meaning of art in the age of late-stage capitalism that ROHTKO really is.
Throughout, the performers speak a seamless blend of Polish, Latvian, Mandarin Chinese and English supported by surtitles. This multilingualism is thrilling in and of itself, whilst also contributing to an overall sense that interpretation is a complex act and reality is in a state of flux. The 2011 Knoedler & Company forgery scandal, where an ostensibly real Rothko was sold for several million US dollars only to be revealed as a fake 12 years later, is used as a springboard for broader questions concerning the relationship between reality and art. None of the characters in ROHTKO are exactly as they seem, and many undergo a series of chameleonic transformations. Similarly, the extraordinary set constantly evolves and reveals new secrets so that the audience is repeatedly knocked off balance and brought right to the edge of their seats.
It is impossible to exaggerate the splendour of Fabien Lédé’s set design, which is miraculously versatile and almost painfully beautiful. Comprised of a series of screens projecting live video feed and several compartments that break apart and reassemble, the design is immaculate down to the smallest detail. A highlight includes the multicoloured jellyfish in a bubbling fish tank which serves as a backdrop to a tense exchange between an art journalist and a museum director, inviting a flash of the absurd into the scene. Lighting by Eugenijus Sabaliauskas is sumptuous and sinister. Deep red is the core colour palate of ROHTKO, soaking the stage in smoky, late-night mystery.
Much of the production is set within a Chinese restaurant called Mr Chow in Brooklyn, where the brightest and best of the New York art world gather to discuss business and pleasure. The restaurant and its clientele evolve through time so that, in one brilliantly acted double-scene, we see Mell (Vita Vārpiņa) and Mark Rothko (Juris Bartkevičs) arguing about an ill-fated commission in 1960, whilst two actors (Ilze Ķuzule-Skrastiņa and Andrzej Jakubczyk) meet in the same restaurant in 2025 having just auditioned for the roles of Mell and Mark Rothko in ROHTKO. The dialogue between the two pairs interweaves so that when Mark tells Mell that he has returned the $38,000 commission fee, his actor counterpart reveals that he is sleeping rough in a Manhattan park. A later screen projection asks pointedly ‘CAN GOOD ART BE CHEAP?’. The commercialisation of art is a central preoccupation of this production, and a takeaway delivery cyclist repeatedly asks the audience “what is the market value of our relationship?”. Powerfully, these questions are never answered.
Impossibly intricate technology, epic scene changes and countless moments of theatrical magic are handled flawlessly throughout. Music design by Lubomir Grzelak is both cinematic and theatrical, encompassing a sweeping range of atmospheres and employing an excellent amount of bass. The emotional heart of the production is a monologue delivered by Katarzyna Osipuk, who describes the untimely death and unrealised art of Marta Zariņa-Ģelze, a young Latvian artist who planned (but never performed) a piece in response to Rothko’s work. Zariņa-Ģelze’s plan was to collect the tears she shed when looking at Rothko’s paintings, making a statement about the intrinsically passionate and human nature of art.
ROHTKO is undoubtedly long, but I could have watched another hour of this curious, elegant and wickedly clever production.
By Anka Herbut
Directed by Łukasz Twarkowski
Cast includes: Juris Bartkevičs, Kaspars Dumburs, Yan Huang, Andrzej Jakubczyk, Rēzija Kalniņa, Ilze Ķuzule-Skrastiņa, Katarzyna Osipuk, Artūrs Skrastiņš, Mārtiņš Upenieks, Vita Vārpiņa, Toms Veličko and Xiaochen Wang.
Until the 5th October 2025
Running time: 3 hours and 55 minutes with interval
Photographer credit: Artūrs Pavlovs