Three Hotels

by Jon Robin Baitz, Ron Rifkin, Christine Lahti

Masterfully written by one of America's most lauded playwrights, this deeply human story unfolds in three hotel rooms in Morocco, the Virgin Islands and Oaxaca, Mexico, as a married couple reflect on their lives as players in the game of international business. A devastating tour-de-force of humor, tragedy, and penetrating insight from one of America's premier playwrights. A BBC co-production.

Genres: Plays

1 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Robbie Baitz was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Edward Baitz, an executive of the Carnation Company. Baitz was raised in Brazil and South Africa before the family returned to California, where he attended Beverly Hills High School.[1] After graduation, he worked as a bookstore clerk and assistant to two producers, and the experiences became the basis for his first play, a one-acter entitled Mizlansky/Zilinsky. He drew on his own background for his first two-act play, The Film Society, about the staff of a prep school in South Africa. Its 1987 success in L.A. led to an off-Broadway production with Nathan Lane the following year, which earned him a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding New Play. This was followed by The End of the Day starring Roger Rees, and The Substance of Fire with Ron Rifkin and Sarah Jessica Parker.
In 1991, Baitz wrote and directed the two-character play Three Hotels, based on his parents, for a presentation of PBS's "American Playhouse", then reworked the material for the stage, earning another Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding New Play for his efforts. In 1993, he co-scripted (with Howard A. Rodman) The Frightening Frammis, which was directed by Tom Cruise and aired as an episode of the Showtime anthology series Fallen Angels. Two years later, Henry Jaglom cast him as a gay playwright who achieves success at an early age - a character inspired by Baitz himself - in the film Last Summer in the Hamptons; the following year he appeared as Michelle Pfeiffer's business associate in the screen comedy One Fine Day. In 1996, he was one of the three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for his semi-autobiographical play A Fair Country.
Subsequent stage works include Mizlansky/Zilinsky or "Schmucks", a revised version of Mizlansky/Zilinsky directed by Baitz's then-partner Joe Mantello (1998), a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (first at L.A.'s Geffen Playhouse with Annette Bening in 1999, then at Long Island's Bay Street Theater with Kate Burton in 2000, followed by a Broadway production with the same star the following year), Ten Unknowns (2001), starring Donald Sutherland and Juliana Margulies, and The Paris Letter (2005) with Ron Rifkin and John Glover. His screenplays include the adaptation of his own Substance of Fire (1996), with Tony Goldwyn and Timothy Hutton joining original cast members Rifkin and Parker, and People I Know (2003), which starred Al Pacino.
Baitz's occasional work writing for such television series as The West Wing and Alias led to his position as creator and executive producer of the ABC TV drama Brothers & Sisters, which premiered in September 2006 and ran for five seasons, ending in May 2011.
Baitz was the New School for Drama's artist in residence for the 2009-2010 school year.[2]
His play Other Desert Cities opened Off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (Lincoln Center) in New York on January 13, 2011, starring Stockard Channing, Linda Lavin, Stacy Keach, Thomas Sadoski and Elizabeth Marvel. [3] The play was originally titled Love and Mercy.[4]. The production transferred to Broadway, opening at the Booth Theatre on November 3, 2011, with Judith Light replacing Lavin and Rachel Griffiths replacing Marvel.

Reviews

[ML Character · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so in my continuing pandemic project of reading the random plays I already own, I finally got to this one. First thing to note is that I am pretty sure this is one of the first play scripts I ever owned- it almost definitely was found at the Friends of the Library Booktique in high school when I volunteered there, seeing all the donations first, pricing them, and then getting a 25% discount on what we bought. And being a kid who liked theatre, but had no connections to serious theatre makers and a pretty underwhelmingly rudimentary high school program, I was a bit... struck? just by the fact that scripts were a book form you could buy. The only thing I'd seen up until then were the Dramatists Play Service scripts that were jealously hoarded for the junior high and high school play, highlighted with my invariable like 2 lines, and then became totally ragged. And so this play with its notable blue cover felt kind of exotic and sophisticated in Kansas. So, 20+ years later, I finally found out what's in there (I think I might have opened it and read a page or two and put it down, bored/uncomprehending once or twice before).

Okay, so what's in it is this short play made of three monologues and more monologues, and cumulatively they are about mostly terrible people who are terrible because... they believe in the status quo and are a part of it. Which, honestly, might be a more accurate and appropriate way to depict most people than the heroic individuals most narratives are more fond of, but is depressing. Baitz has a couple favored themes: being gay and being Jewish. And together, along with this early-90s/80s yuppie hangover vibe of amoral and ruthless businesspeople and LA entertainment people (mostly) I ended up with the sense that although I don't wanna watch this play or monologues, (ugh, monologues- SO. BORING.) that they *are* doing some useful soul-searching about trying to understand how to be minoritized (Gay, Jewish) AND privileged (bourgeois, educated) at the same time. The pseudo Baitz parents of Three Hotels are tortured people who are broken BECAUSE they were bad and callous (and unlucky with their son Brandon). I realized either bourgeois plays about bourgeois people's problems are no longer in fashion, or maybe I just stopped reading and watching them, so I think they're not popular anymore. And that leads me to one larger question/conundrum about theatre in general. Theatre is ridiculously bourgeois- I don't think that's a reason to excoriate it- it just IS expensive and inefficient to create, and I have to both believe in efforts to even the economic playing field AND the value of wasteful and inefficient art forms. Anyway, was there something more honest about a bourgeois institution staging bourgeois concerns for bourgeois patrons than a bourgeois institution staging working class and social justice concerns for bourgeois patrons? Because doesn't only switching out that ONE variable look a little... disingenuous, prurient, and/or [2020-style] "performative"?

[Curran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Jon Robin Baitz's writing since Brothers & Sisters. It's distinctly human, American, and political. I listened to the audiobook and could listen to Christine Lahti read the phone book, and Ron Rifkin's performance is touching.

[Zac Stojcevski · Rating 5 out of 5]

A modern tragedy that has elements of a corporate Mephistopheles, a corporate wife akin Desdemona, a demon called Nestle and the death of a family in three acts, cleverly each being an extended monologue.

[Vladimiro Sousa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Three Hotels" is a thought-provoking play that explores themes of corporate responsibility, moral ambiguity, and personal integrity. The play tells the story of Kenneth, an American executive who visits three different hotels in three different countries, and the moral dilemmas he faces as he confronts the impact of his company's actions on the local communities.

Baitz's writing is both smart and sophisticated, and he doesn't shy away from exploring the gray areas of corporate responsibility and ethical decision-making.

It is a compelling and insightful play that raises important questions about the role of corporations in society and the responsibilities of individuals in positions of power. It is a must-see for anyone interested in exploring complex ethical issues and the nuances of human behavior.

[Dina · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I've read a play. I'd picked this one up in Ashland but never saw the play. The title play was incredibly thought provoking -- all about business, ethics, choices and family. There were other plays that were equally deep -- some which focused on more specific personal and artistic issues, but others that were universal. These weren't my favorites, but they were definitely interesting.