NEW YORK — What would the great American artist Jean-Michele Basquiat have achieved, how famous would he now be, had he not died of a heroin overdose in 1988 at the age of 27?
A moot question, for sure, but very much one that hangs over “The Collaboration,” the interesting new Broadway play by the prolific Anthony McCarten, capably directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, and staged by the Manhattan Theatre Club.
That’s mostly because the actor Jeremy Pope depicts the neo-expressionist artist, a genius who was part of the Whitney Biennial at 22 years old and whose paintings now sell for hundreds of millions, with such tenderness and empathy.
