Unlike the typical one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle where the completed puzzle matches the image on the cover, “The Collaboration’s” dénouement and resolution are nothing like the playwright’s supposed intention when writing the script. Anthony McCarten sets us up for a scuba diving expedition. The playwright teases us into a deep-sea dive into the wreckage that is the lives of two disparate artists who are desperate to overcome death in ways that are as different than their artistic expressions. Neoexpressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat (an intense and multi-layered Jeremy Pope) and pop artist Andy Warhol (a brooding and winsome Paul Bettany) hope to overcome death by the collaboration to create a new exhibit proposed by Basquiat’s agent Bruno Bischofberger (Erik Jensen).

After much soul-searching and bickering between the two artists, they agree to collaborate on the exhibit and hope to establish a friendship in the process. Currently running at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, “The Collaboration” promises to deliver that successful bonding through his script and the audience-left and audience-right projections (Duncan McLean) which show Basquait and Warhol learning to “play well together” in the sandbox of creativity. Neither reveals to the audience the process of the pair achieving the bond assumed at the opening of the second act.

Only by following the impressive craft of the two actors and the director (Kwame Kwei-Armah) through the playwright’s sometimes bumpy maze do we manage to discover the treasure of the true collaboration between Basquait and Warhol: Theirs is not about a collaboration about art or painting. It is a collaboration of cultures, brokenness, genders, identities, dysfunction, addiction, and authenticity. We discover that Warhol had no interest in painting but only wanted to make a film of Basquait while he painted. And Basquait only wants to know why Warhol stopped painting. Warhol is not afraid of dying: Basquait is. Warhol does not want Basquait to end his life through addition: Basquait believes he has the power to bring Warhol back from the dead. This is the play’s window into the collaboration between the two, not their shared painting.

Both Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope deliver extraordinary performances, nuanced with pathos and believability. Their performances are like rock climbing in reverse. We descend into the abyss of their relationship, all the time hanging on to the anchors provided by both actors. There would be no “Collaboration” without them.

Anna Fleischle’s set design and Ben Stanton’s lighting design provide the perfect border for “Collaboration.”