“In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat” at New York Theatre Workshop (Photo: Marcus Middleton)

Roger Guenveur Smith, barefoot in a slightly ill-fitting suit, performs In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat at a microphone on the mostly empty stage of New York Theatre Workshop. Live sound design by Marc Anthony Thompson and the occasional lighting cue by Arlo Sanders, vary the mood only occasionally, placing the emphasis on words rather than images. This makes sense, of course: unlike his late friend, Smith—a writer, actor, spoken-word artist, and former rap frontman—inhabits a world of linguistic storytelling.

Yet, throughout the performance, I found my attention drawn back to a tiny portal upstage, a cutout through which vibrant colors could occasionally be glimpsed. This subtle nod in Raphael Mishler’s set design doesn’t seem to reference any of Basquiat’s art work specifically, but it captures the spirit of his evocative canvases, which can often leave the viewer grasping to organize the panoply of images and colors in real time.

With respect to Smith, whose delivery toggles between the hypnotic and the static, I left feeling as if the suggestion of colors and shapes, even slightly obscured, captured, in raw detail, the legacy of Basquiat more than sections of his monologue. That is, perhaps, part of the point: Smith doesn’t set out to recount his late friend’s life or to reveal sordid details of their friendship, which took root in Los Angeles during a period in the 1980s where both men were creatively fertile. Smith weaves the details of his own life, and Basquiat’s, through the expectations placed on Black artists and how people can become cultural commodities.

But even clocking in at a loose hour, the performance sometimes drags, with one of Thompson’s onstage musical fragments much needed to liven up the mood. In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat at times gives off the impression of a story-slam segment that’s been stretched beyond its bounds and is bursting at its own seams.

There is no question that Smith honors Basquiat. But even though he doesn’t set out to paint a reverential picture, the artist himself remains somewhat abstract. So, too, do the hidden colors upstage. But when you can catch a glimpse of them in the warm glow of the stage lights, they absolutely shine.