“What do you see?” demands Edward Gero, the actor playing the painter Mark Rothko in the Arena Stage/Goodman Theatre co-production of John Logan’s “Red” at Arena Stage. It’s a great first line for a play that is all about seeing. Superficially, the play is about seeing in the most basic ways: looking at a canvas, discerning colors, understanding the relationship of vertical and horizontal spaces. Yet as Logan’s script unfolds, it begins to explore other more metaphorical kinds of perception. Rothko was a philosophical artist, who wrote at great length about the effect he wanted his work to have and the way he wanted the world to understand his paintings.

But while Rothko had a superior mind, he was a difficult man. Thus Logan’s Rothko is erratic, moody, emotionally inaccessible. Directed by Robert Falls, Gero’s portrayal of Rothko is soulful and deeply felt. In a stunning display of emotions ranging from doubt to absolute certainty, Gero paints an utterly credible picture of the complicated, volatile Rothko.