Baitz Makes Broadway Debut with LOVE AND MERCY Next Season

As previously reported, Jon Robin Baitz is currently working on a show about producer Robert Evans. The scribe will first make his Broadway debut as a playwright, however, with LOVE AND MERCY which will take to the Broadway stage next season.

LOVE AND MERCY takes place during the holidays at Palm Springs. The story follows a one-time matinee idol turned politician, his screenwriter wife and their novelist daughter and touches on themes of parental love and filial duty, our myth-making culture, and the claim we have on our own biography when it involves the invasion of privacy of others.  Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel will produce the new show.

Casting and creative team announcements are forthcoming.

Jon Robin Baitz' first play was a one-acter entitled MIZLANSKY/ZILINSKY based off of his experiences working a a bookstore clerk and assistant to two producers.

He again 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.

Other works by Baitz include THREE HOTELS and the semi-autobiographical play A FAIR COUNTRY which was one of the three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Baitz' adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's HEDDA GABLER starring Kate Burton played on Broadway in 2001.
Baitz's occasional work writing for such television series as "The West Wing" and "Alias" led to his present position as creator and executive producer of the ABC TV drama "Brothers & Sisters," which premiered in September 2006.

Baitz is set to pen the stage adaptation of Hollywood legend Robert Evans' memoirs, "The Kid Stays in the Picture" and its sequel, "The Fat Lady Sang," with award-winning Sir Richard Eyre set to direct.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.