Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press
“Mr. Baitz is always the most interesting and most effortlessly articulate when he is tracing the interlocking grooves of psychology and morality. In The Paris Letter, the combustible ingredient of sexuality is added to the mixture, cranking up the firepower.” –Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
Jon Robin Baitz has been praised as one of America’s foremost playwrights on themes of conscience. Now from the author of The Substance of Fire comes an absorbing new play about power and money and the ruinous effects it can have on friendship, love, marriage, and ultimately oneself. In this modern tragedy set in urban New York City, Wall Street powerhouse Sandy Sonenberg finds his personal and professional life threatened by the unraveling secrets of his past. After burying his true sexual identity, a lethal affair with a young male associate forces Sonenberg to confront a lifetime of unrequited love and betrayal.
“Mr. Baitz is always the most interesting and most effortlessly articulate when he is tracing the interlocking grooves of psychology and morality. In The Paris Letter, the combustible ingredient of sexuality is added to the mixture, cranking up the firepower.” –Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
“His characters have a complexity, a richness, a level of cultural awareness that was once standard by is now exotic. . . . The Paris Letter remains further proof of Baitz’s power to create plays with novelistic depth.” –Howard Kissel, Daily News
“Baitz’s tautly scripted drama that covers 40 years in the life of a tortured protagonist, money manager Sandy Sonnerberg. . . . Deeply personal and implicitly sociological, Sandy’s struggle is played out as a modern urban tragedy. His Oedipus irony moment at the end of a miserable life: “The whole world is gay now, and it’s fine!”” –David Cote, Time Out New York
“[The Paris Letter] is graced by elegant writing and sensitive observation of the compromises that inhibit the pursuit of love and happiness.” –David Rooney, Daily Variety Gotham
“In a play that resembles a scaled-down Angles in America, Baitz deftly portrays the upper realms of Manhattan, then and now.” –Malcolm Johnson, Hartford Courant
“The best gay novel of the year is Jon Robin Baitz’s new play The Paris Letter. It’s a beautiful, densely written saga that sprawls in time, space, and subject matter with Henry James’s attention to the details of class, Nabokov’s telling conciseness, and Michael Cunningham’s way with a multi-generational family story. . . . With its fascinating, exquisitely drawn characters and literary (almost operatic) sweep, it’s the kind of play that serious theatergoers hunger for.” –Don Shewey, The Advocate
“The Paris Letter is a startling cautionary tale about the perils of concealing the truth from others and from oneself. That it is presented with such skill and passion makes it nothing less than require viewing.” –Ettore Toppi, New York Blade.com
An Independent Literary Publisher Since 1917
