Review: 'The Collaboration' Offers Simplistic Look at Complex Artists

Making its way to Broadway from The Young Vic Theater in London is Anthony McCarten's character study, "The Collaboration," which boasts two terrific performances by Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol and Jeremy Pope as Jean-Michel Basquiat – and not much else.

You don't have to be an art lover to appreciate the premise of the show: How did the groundbreaking collaboration between two art world titans come about, and what might their interactions have been like? "The Collaboration" has a promising first act, only to bog down in predictability, modern cliché speak, and forced conflict in Act Two.

McCarten, a two-time Oscar nominee for "The Theory of Everything" and "The Two Popes," has also penned the screenplays for "Darkest Hour," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." He is also the book writer of "A Beautiful Noise," currently on Broadway. Interestingly, the film version of "The Collaboration" has already been announced. Hopefully, McCarten's screenplay will be more probing.

The McCarten school of writing doesn't go much deeper than info you can find via Google or on Wikipedia. In "The Two Popes," he wrote a loving bio of two two living pontiffs, one who was responsible for covering up sex abuse without barely mentioning that fact, which is an insult to survivors. With "Bohemian Rhapsody," he did his best to de-gay Freddie Mercury by focusing on his straight relationship and leaning away from his queer identity. So, it's no surprise that Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat are reduced to cautious, somewhat amusing, one-dimensional representations.

Bettany probably speaks more in this play than Warhol did in his lifetime (exaggeration, but how much?), yet he still manages to convey Warhol's debilitating shyness and insecurity – especially about his pale white looks and his scarred body. (Warhol was famously shot by his so-called "friend," radical feminist Valerie Solanas, in 1968.) But Warhol was much more of an enigma than is presented here. He was a watcher who capitalized on those that actually created art – and took much of the credit. He might have been our first reality star, famous for being famous with his now terribly ironic quote, "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."

Pope shows us Basquiat's personal pain, artistic angst, and confusion around newfound wealth, but McCarten is too keen on turning him into a racial symbol instead of a flesh and blood person, leaving Pope's work stymied.

Both artists would die prematurely. Warhol went in for a gall bladder operation and died on the table in 1987. Two years later, Basquiat succumbed to a heroin overdose.

Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, "The Collaboration" is too safe to offend or make audiences feel uncomfortable (something both artists would have loathed). It also has a simplistic structured that feels like it was borrowed from a "How to Write a Play" manual.

Warhol and Basquiat's unlikely collaboration and – even more astonishing – deep friendship in the early '80s resulted in the creation of extraordinary works of art. Basquiat even moved into a loft/studio that Warhol owned. Whether they had a falling out or not is uncertain, but this rendering of their interaction and process is far too facile and an insult to both artists.

"The Collaboration" is playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 W. 47th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue).