I tend to view plays about creativity or the artistic process with a degree of trepidation. Either they have something important to say but are inherently undramatic, or you have a lively, well-characterised debate with slight intellectual residue. It is rare indeed to find one that crackles with genuine tension and allows important issues to be given the balanced weight and consideration they deserve. Lee, however, does.
In a play about a specific school of art – abstract expressionism – you first of all need the art to be credible, and immediately on entering the theatre you are reassured on that point. Designer Ian Nicholas has plausibly created the light and airy barn in which both Pollock and Krasner painted and covered the walls with a series of compelling pastiche canvases in the style of Krasner – the swaggering swirls and dizzying drips of her post-war work are delightfully recreated as a solid foundation of the debate to come.
As the drama opens, we find Krasner at work in 1969, bebop jazz on the radio, and a new canvas underway, a decade or so after Pollock has died in an inebriated car accident. She is interrupted by two characters – by Pollock himself, always in her head even after death, as their debate over artistic style continues, and – more prosaically, by Hank, the grocery delivery boy, and the son of a neighbour whom Pollock knew well.
It turns out that Hank himself yearns to escape small-town America and go to art school. He persuades Krasner to look at his portfolio and the discussion turns to what makes an artist and where and when creative originality enters in. So far, so predictable, perhaps. But things take a darker and more dramatic turn as Hank produces a drip painting which Pollock had given to his father to settle a debt. Would Lee authenticate it for him? She reacts furiously, perhaps more furiously than the facts merit, and accuses him of stealing it.
What follows next is a wonderfully tight piece of theatre as both the truth of the painting and the creative-abusive nature of Krasner’s relationship with her late husband are unfurled. There are some sharp observations here on the subjugation 0f women artists, the complex motivations involved, including why women have repeatedly accepted such situations, and, even more disturbingly, how innovation and abuse have gone hand in hand. This is scintillating stuff, played for all it is worth by all three actors.
Helen Dyson gives a hugely detailed portrait of Krasner herself – cynical, hard-bitten and tough, and with every reason to be so; yet totally devoted to her art and prepared to enable Pollock and his treatment of her because of his gifts and their genuine creative synergy. You totally believe in her both as a creative figure and as a damaged and damaging human being. Tom Andrews has a smaller part to play on stage, but in all his appearances as Pollock he dominates the stage, a manifestation of rampaging ego to be sure, but also needy and helpless, with only his artistic vision to recommend him. Will Bagnall has perhaps the most difficult role to play, initially just the prompt man for Krasner’s exposition. But he grows in stature, and memorably fights his corner when he has to, turning the moral if not artistic tables at key points.
This is a thoroughly engrossing evening that should send everyone back to the post-war galleries at Tate Modern on a voyage of re-discovery. At present the key Pollock canvas is on loan; and so, appropriately enough, Krasner dominates the walls instead. Not before time.
Writer: Cian Griffin
Director: Jason Moore
Cast: Tom Andrews, Will Bagnall, Helen Goldwyn
Until 18 October 2025
1 hr 25 mins, no interval
Photo Credit: Giacomo Giannelli