The Collaboration (2*)

Thirty five years after his death, Andy Warhol is a blank canvas on which the entertainment world (Broadway, Netflix, pop music) paints mostly lovelorn conjecture.  That's not the Andy I remember.  Granted, my exposure mostly was limited to his media depiction--the basis of his most successful art, the creation of a personal brand--and later, the unauthorized release of his diaries and an excellent, thoroughly researched biography, but still.  

I really wanted to like The Collaboration and I also love the concept of a straight actor playing a gay man and vice versa, although I appreciated a man of color's performance of Andy (Julio Torres) in WARHOLCAPOTE at the New York Public Library in September even more.  That's probably because Rob Roth based his far superior play on conversations with Truman that Andy taped, imbuing it with actual poignance rather than maudlin psychoanalyzing.

Paul Bettany's Andy is way too voluble, aggressive and attractive.  Jean-Michel Basquiat does much better by the always convincing Jeremy Pope even if you can't imagine him having the body odor that Andy complains about in the diaries almost as often as he mentions the size of his cock.  

But the play itself fails miserably by trying to pump up the significance of a relationship more charitably characterized as mentor/protege and less so as landlord/tenant.  It mystifies me why Anthony McCarten would focus on a stunt dreamed up by an art dealer when their well-chronicled May/December friendship was way more complicated and interesting.  One need only see to the coup de theater delivered by the production's excellent director--a projection of the collaboration's fruit--to recognize its mediocrity.

Art doesn't have to reflect reality but for a play about two of its greatest 20th-century American practitioners, verisimilitude should at least be a consideration.  Even Andy might have winced.