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The Paris Letter: A Play
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.
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.
- GenresPlays
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 2006
2 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
Jon Robin Baitz
34 books29 followersRobbie 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 20, 2017
I vaguely remember reading this when it first came out a dozen years ago, and not being able to figure out what was going on (I was thrown trying to figure out the doubling of the actors, rather than just concentrating on the characters). Anyway, a friend recently did the play across country, so I was unable to see it, but that impelled me to revisit it. THIS time it made complete sense, and though in some senses, it has not aged well, other aspects have sharpened since its debut.
November 17, 2022
This one really annoyed me. Sorry for the (possible) spoilers!
Jon Robin Baitz's The Paris Letter is about a man named Sandy (short for Sanford) Sonnenberg, the last in the line of a family of Jewish financiers whose refusal to confront his own sexuality in an honest way results in tragedy for himself and everybody around him. Sandy is aware of his proclivity (he would hardly call it an orientation or even a preference) at a fairly tender age; in his final year of college he takes to frequenting a Bohemian/artsy (read "homosexual") restaurant owned by the effete artist-turned-entrepreneur Anton Kilgallen, and after only a few visits he winds up in Anton's bed, and then Anton's lover for three months in the winter of 1962-63.
But Sandy is deeply ashamed of what he sees as behavior that's both immoral and enormously inconvenient. So he seeks the help of notorious/renowned psychiatrist Dr. Moritz Schiffman, who specializes in reassigning gay men to a "normal" heterosexual lifestyle. Schiffman counsels Sandy to end his affair with Anton immediately, which he does.
Nearly 40 years later, Sandy--now married, for two decades, to Katie Arlen, the wildly successful owner/chef of a trendy NYC bistro and a dear friend and former employee of Anton's--becomes involved with a young gay Wall Street wizard named Burt Sarris. The nature of this involvement is not disclosed all at once, and should not be presumed to be sexual; its initial and most important aspect is rooted in business, for Sandy has decided to retire and has chosen Burt to be his successor, transferring his clients over to the younger man. But Burt gets in over his head and loses all of the clients' money--to the tune of 100 million dollars. Sandy tells Burt (in the very first of the play; the bulk of The Paris Letter is told in flashbacks) that the only honorable thing for him to do is to commit suicide, which Burt promptly does. Sandy then heads off to Europe, presumably to make good on Burt's debts (the precise legal nature of that obligation is very fuzzy). From Paris, he sends a letter home to his wife, but the play's title notwithstanding, the main point that Baitz seems to want to make is that Sandy has screwed up royally, although what Sandy's repressed homosexuality has to do with Burt's irresponsibility eluded me completely. Sandy's repression and the bad acts resulting from it are not linked convincingly to Sandy's downfall. If the tragic flaw doesn't cause the tragedy, then what's the play about?
The details of the thing only make comprehensibility more allusive. We're supposed to believe that Anton has stood by as Sandy's faithful friend for some 40 years; that Sandy is comfortable with but never tempted by the omnipresence of the onetime lover who led him "astray"; that self-loathing homophobe Sandy has a great relationship with Katie's grown and openly gay son Sam; that Sam, a teacher who works in Brooklyn at a public school, spends his Monday evenings chatting amiably with his mother, step-father, godfather (Anton, of course), and Burt Sarris; that the remnants of the great Sonnenberg fortune--five diamonds worth half a million dollars--are stowed in a safe deposit box in a city in Europe (I guess) that I've never heard of and can be readily converted to cash (half a million dollars!) in post-9/11 New York.
Where Baitz finally and irredeemably loses his way in the play, however, is in his mangling of the (presumed) moral of the story. Sandy's a nasty piece of work, no doubt about it--selfish and craven--but he's presented as being genuinely loved and respected by everyone in the play. (Okay, Anton chides him for not being "true" to his nature, but not in a meaningful way.) Anton, meanwhile--the openly gay guy--is a character out of late Tennessee Williams: a vitriolic, unhappy queen who lives alone and unloved, finding only occasional relief in the company of strangers (or something). Hardly a potent voice for gay pride, this; neither is Sandy's ingenuous declaration that if he were a young gay man today he wouldn't have denied his sexuality--"Everyone's gay today," he proclaims, apparently unaware of the Bush administration's attitudes toward same-sex coupling. I suspect that a great many scared, repressed young people living in America in 2005 would take issue with that statement.
Jon Robin Baitz's The Paris Letter is about a man named Sandy (short for Sanford) Sonnenberg, the last in the line of a family of Jewish financiers whose refusal to confront his own sexuality in an honest way results in tragedy for himself and everybody around him. Sandy is aware of his proclivity (he would hardly call it an orientation or even a preference) at a fairly tender age; in his final year of college he takes to frequenting a Bohemian/artsy (read "homosexual") restaurant owned by the effete artist-turned-entrepreneur Anton Kilgallen, and after only a few visits he winds up in Anton's bed, and then Anton's lover for three months in the winter of 1962-63.
But Sandy is deeply ashamed of what he sees as behavior that's both immoral and enormously inconvenient. So he seeks the help of notorious/renowned psychiatrist Dr. Moritz Schiffman, who specializes in reassigning gay men to a "normal" heterosexual lifestyle. Schiffman counsels Sandy to end his affair with Anton immediately, which he does.
Nearly 40 years later, Sandy--now married, for two decades, to Katie Arlen, the wildly successful owner/chef of a trendy NYC bistro and a dear friend and former employee of Anton's--becomes involved with a young gay Wall Street wizard named Burt Sarris. The nature of this involvement is not disclosed all at once, and should not be presumed to be sexual; its initial and most important aspect is rooted in business, for Sandy has decided to retire and has chosen Burt to be his successor, transferring his clients over to the younger man. But Burt gets in over his head and loses all of the clients' money--to the tune of 100 million dollars. Sandy tells Burt (in the very first of the play; the bulk of The Paris Letter is told in flashbacks) that the only honorable thing for him to do is to commit suicide, which Burt promptly does. Sandy then heads off to Europe, presumably to make good on Burt's debts (the precise legal nature of that obligation is very fuzzy). From Paris, he sends a letter home to his wife, but the play's title notwithstanding, the main point that Baitz seems to want to make is that Sandy has screwed up royally, although what Sandy's repressed homosexuality has to do with Burt's irresponsibility eluded me completely. Sandy's repression and the bad acts resulting from it are not linked convincingly to Sandy's downfall. If the tragic flaw doesn't cause the tragedy, then what's the play about?
The details of the thing only make comprehensibility more allusive. We're supposed to believe that Anton has stood by as Sandy's faithful friend for some 40 years; that Sandy is comfortable with but never tempted by the omnipresence of the onetime lover who led him "astray"; that self-loathing homophobe Sandy has a great relationship with Katie's grown and openly gay son Sam; that Sam, a teacher who works in Brooklyn at a public school, spends his Monday evenings chatting amiably with his mother, step-father, godfather (Anton, of course), and Burt Sarris; that the remnants of the great Sonnenberg fortune--five diamonds worth half a million dollars--are stowed in a safe deposit box in a city in Europe (I guess) that I've never heard of and can be readily converted to cash (half a million dollars!) in post-9/11 New York.
Where Baitz finally and irredeemably loses his way in the play, however, is in his mangling of the (presumed) moral of the story. Sandy's a nasty piece of work, no doubt about it--selfish and craven--but he's presented as being genuinely loved and respected by everyone in the play. (Okay, Anton chides him for not being "true" to his nature, but not in a meaningful way.) Anton, meanwhile--the openly gay guy--is a character out of late Tennessee Williams: a vitriolic, unhappy queen who lives alone and unloved, finding only occasional relief in the company of strangers (or something). Hardly a potent voice for gay pride, this; neither is Sandy's ingenuous declaration that if he were a young gay man today he wouldn't have denied his sexuality--"Everyone's gay today," he proclaims, apparently unaware of the Bush administration's attitudes toward same-sex coupling. I suspect that a great many scared, repressed young people living in America in 2005 would take issue with that statement.
July 12, 2023
(Two) Class Act(s).
July 8, 2024
4.5
Didn't even see that ending coming...total surprise
Didn't even see that ending coming...total surprise
October 31, 2016
Great plot: wild ending! Jon Robin Baitz is one of my favorite playwrights!
June 26, 2014
I liked the book on tape version of this. It had an amazing cast with Neil Patrick Harris, Josh Radnor, Ron Rifkin and Patricia Wettig. Funny that they all ended up working together later in other sitcoms. RR & PW were in Brother's and Sisters and NPH and JR in How I met your Mother. I listened to this twice while I was traveling. I thought the play was really well done. I got a little confused the first time because some of the actors play two characters but it was really clear the second time. It was interesting to hear it through the 2nd time too just because you know the characters better and how things will pan out. It gave me insight into the challenges of a bi-sexual person who's trying to live a monogamous life and what the paradoxes are that they face. I would recommend this to anyone that loves these actors and wants a well written play to enjoy! Very well done!
May 4, 2010
It's sad and it's memorable.
July 28, 2011
I had enjoyed the Broadway production that starred Ron Rifkin and John Glover and so I bought the script. A sobering play, well performed.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews