The Substance of Fire
Mainstage Theater
Written by
Jon Robin Baitz
Directed by Daniel Sullivan
At its core is Isaac Geldhart, a childhood survivor of the Holocaust, who arrived in New York City an orphan, reinvented himself as a bon vivant, married well, and found fame and fortune as a champion of authors who are passionate about their work rather than its best-seller potential. Faced with a family-business conflict, the potential Japanese takeover of his increasingly insolvent firm, he must browbeat his three adult children, all principal stockholders whom he dismisses in varying degrees, into accepting his plan to publish a six-volume scholarly work on Nazi medical experiments, despite their belief that a highly successful commercial novel is the only thing that will keep them from going under.
Photo of (1) Patrick Breen, Jon Tenney, Ron Rifkin, and Sarah Jessica Parker; (2) Jon Tenney and Sarah Jessica Parker by Peter Cunningham.