The New York Times - Highly Recommended
"... ¦ Jon Robin Baitz's play The Substance of Fire ¯ at times seems to have grown some gray whiskers. Watching the sure-footed new revival of the play ¦featuring standout performances by the Australian actor John Noble and the ever-vibrant Charlayne Woodard, I kept thinking of dramas about family, money and morality written way back in the early years of the 20th century by Harley Granville Barker. For all the surface fireworks of the play's first half Mr. Baitz's characters share a flinty eloquence that enlivens the sometimes discursive proceedings it's only when Ms. Woodard and Mr. Noble are alone onstage that the production, directed by Trip Cullman, attains a powerful grip on our feelings. Mr. Noble's beautifully judged performance exposes the fear and loneliness that have slowly eroded Isaac's self-assurance ¦Ms. Woodard is just as impressive as Marge ¦the actors generate a wonderful sense of teasing tension as they move quickly between sympathy and antipathy and back again."
NY Daily News - Recommended
"...Publish or perish assumes unexpected meaning in "The Substance of Fire," an intriguing but frustrating drama. Baitz' script packs smarts and spiky humor, especially in the livelier first half. The playwright explored similar terrain with more finesse in his excellent 2011 play "Other Desert Cities." Despite contrivances and loose ends in "The Substance of Fire," Trip Cullman's fine direction and uniformly terrific cast keep it all from going up in smoke."
NY1 - Recommended
"...With a title like "The Substance Of Fire," you'd expect a heated drama, but Jon Robin Baitz's 23-year-old play doesn't raise the dramatic temperature all that high. Still, it's an intelligent work and well-acted. And if it feels rather dated, it makes for an intriguing character study. But by the end, there's disappointingly little resolution to this family conflict. On the other hand, the characters come through loud and clear, and that's both a testament to Baitz's articulate crafting and Trip Cullman's steady hand as director. On Anna Louizos' handsome sets, Halley Feiffer, Carter Hudson and Daniel Eric Gold fill their parts with compelling urgency, and John Noble is so strong in the role, he actually manages to make this ogre of a father a somewhat sympathetic being. Jon Robin Baitz is a smart writer, and even though the play is far from perfect, he's loaded it with the kind of nuance and personality detail more typically found in a good read."
New York Post - Recommended
"...The Substance of Fire ¯ is two plays for the price of one: Each act is almost self-contained. Too bad the first is much better than the second at least in Trip Cullman's lopsided revival of Jon Robin Baitz's family drama. Baitz went on to explore parents and children and the need to exorcise the past in his vastly superior Other Desert Cities. ¯ Still, this show starts off well, and is even suspenseful in the way it reveals how Isaac's intransigence messed up his offspring. Yet that story line is abandoned in the second act, which takes place three and a half years later. But the ¦bond [between Isaac and Marge] feels forced, and the actors aren't on the same page: Noble swiftly transitions from tyrannical to vulnerable, but Woodard's oddly mannered performance doesn't make for a good match. After the original bonfire, we're left with barely flickering embers."
Entertainment Weekly - Recommended
"...It's easy to sense the relevance of Jon Robin Baitz's 1991 two-for-one special The Substance of Fire. Unfortunately, two entirely different plays are on display here, linked only by the performance of Fringe's John Noble, who is far better than the material in either one. In 2011's Other Desert Cities, Baitz showed a flair for familial fireworks. That gift is on satisfactory display in the clever first act ¦ Act 2 picks up three and a half years later gone are the excitable arguments about literature and financial risks ¦The drearier second act never comes close to the zippy momentum Cullman builds in the first, but thankfully Noble makes the best of a more retrospective Isaac, who begins to show cracks in his stoicism. The entire production belongs to Noble...He masterfully switches between simmering coals Isaac's silences often say more than his shouting and full-blown inferno. If the play ultimately fails to light up, at least Noble's nuanced performance emerges as the substance that truly ignites."
Newsday - Recommended
"...Jon Robin Baitz, best known now for the dazzling "Other Desert Cities," burst into New York theater in the late '80s with an eerily mature mastery of intimate emotions and big ideas. In 1991, "The Substance of Fire" explored with rare insight the crumbling publishing industry and the effects of an intellectual bully of a father. The second act never lived up to the first, which is also true in director Trip Cullman's workmanlike revival at the Second Stage Theatre. But John Noble has a grand, flawed majesty as the father. And despite the dated snapshot of the publishing world, the play still defines agonizing family dynamics and the struggle between commercial and serious work with timely power."
NorthJersey - Recommended
"...Jon Robin Baitz's "The Substance of Fire" is a fiercely intelligent work, even if it seems like two separate plays stitched haphazardly together. Australian actor John Noble, speaking in a refined but biting Eastern European accent, does a superb job of capturing the breadth of the character his seductiveness and his appalling selfishness [in] ¦very accomplished acting. The grown children, though, under the direction of Trip Cullman, come across as stalled adolescents, never becoming worthy antagonists for Isaac. The second act of "The Substance of Fire" is a big letdown; the first act is sharp, lively, insightful and at times powerful theater."
Time Out New York - Recommended
"...I doubt that John Noble (of Fox's Fringe) will get the same career bump from the current revival [that Ron Rifkin experienced]. That's not a knock on the Australian stage veteran's fine, peppery turn. It's just that Baitz's early hit (he was 29 then) now seems a period piece instead of the roar of a new voice. The second act jumps ahead three years and introduces a surprise character and a secret agenda, marking Fire as a play whose young author wanted to keep us on our toes. But the result feels disjointed and twisty for its own sake despite yards of witty lines and literary references. The flame still burns, just not as brightly."
Village Voice - Somewhat Recommended
"...Family trauma plus historical trauma: a tried and true combination, yet so difficult to play. Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire first produced in 1990, now at Second Stage packs so much grief into a two-hour generational feud that, despite its worthwhile subject matter, the play collapses under its own weight. Baitz's subjects have changed in poignant ways since 1990: The book industry is nearer implosion, and far fewer Holocaust survivors remain. But surely there are more inventive, less repetitive ways to explore these subjects: Here, we end up with too much substance and too little fire."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...Heat can come by way of strong bursts or a long, slow, steady smolder, and which you prefer for your theatrical consumption is what's likely to determine your reaction to the new revival of The Substance of Fire ¦Isaac is certainly a tour-de-force part, but you'd never know that from the way John Noble plays him. But if Noble's reserved take pays some dividends late in the show ¦it's at the expense of exchanges in the first act...Part of this is because Noble's cast mates are downplaying their characters' passions as well. Though Cullman's production is well paced ¦it's Baitz's writing that remains the true headliner. I've not been much of a fan of Baitz's recent work ¦which have struck me as overwritten and simplistically conceived. But if The Substance of Fire is structurally loose in places, and if much of the dialogue (especially for the children) has a pressed-too-hard quality, the play is a highly perceptive and detailed character study that can't be ignored."
TheaterMania - Highly Recommended
"...Baitz (Other Desert Cities) has a keen eye for generational drama, and this excellent revival at Second Stage Theatre is a testament to that. It's impossible not to see echoes of the present in this timeless tale. Like a latter-day King Lear, Isaac is left to brood on his loss of power and lack of understanding of his children. Viewed 24 years after its world premiere, The Substance of Fire feels surprisingly prescient. Isaac's voice, tyrannical though it may be, comes into the space like a breath of fresh air. Taken in the context of 2014, this old patriarch feels like a young radical."
