Review: THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE at Ruskin Group

Rob Morrow is aging interestingly.

Eternally known to many as Joel Flieschman, the boyish and cocksure New York Jewish doctor out of his geographical element in TV’s NORTHERN EXPSOURE in the 1990s, Morrow has made a couple of recent returns to the stage, treading the boards at the tiny Ruskin Group Theatre. Following up his Willy Loman in DEATH OF A SALESMAN in 2019, Morrow reunites with director Mike Reilly to take on Isaac Geldhart in a revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s play THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE at the Ruskin. In this endeavor, Morrow has found a dramatic vehicle that – more than 25 years after its premiere - is deepening and maturing as intriguingly as the actor himself. Baitz’s play is small with a loud heart. Reilly, Morrow and co. do it up proud.

Admittedly the cultural landscape has altered big time since 1987 when the play is set; references to the successful penetration of brick and mortar bookstores seem impossibly quaint to a present-day audience. Isaac is a Holocaust survivor whose love of books – quality books – informed both the founding of his publishing house and the shoddy treatment of his children. He is every inch a dinosaur, and sometimes an outright monster, but when he rails against the “big carcinogenic pile of trash building up all around you,” he is both righteous and not incorrect.

The first act of FIRE depicts the reckoning between Isaac and his adult children who have been summoned to deal with the fact that the family business is on the brink of ruin. In the second act, set three and a half years later, we see how Isaac is progressing following the family blow-up of Act 1. It’s here where we observe Morrow aged, bits of gray in his hair, showing early signs of (strategically employed?) dementia, along with a spike in Isaac’s bitterness and ferocity, and, yes maybe also a deepening of the character’s ability to feel something like compassion.

That’s a trek of a journey. The Isaac Geldhart we meet in Act 1 is proud, dismissive, single-minded of purpose. He is not especially pleased to to reconnect with his son Martin (played by Barret T. Lewis) and daughter Sarah (Fiona Dorn). The former, who teaches landscape architecture at Vassar, Isaac refers to as a gardener while his actress daughter is a “birthday party clown.” The endearment “sweetheart” that he tosses around feels entirely perfunctory or snide, but Isaac knows he has to make nice. Sort of. His son Aaron (Emmitt Butler) – also the firm’s vice president – is proposing to publish a novel written by his former lover, a manuscript Isaac characterizes as trash. He would rather use what meager resources the firm still has to publish six volumes on Nazi medical experiments. The stand-off triggers a showdown of sorts with control of the company at stake.

With SUBSTANCE, Baitz – only 27 at the time – wrote a richly detailed family who he sets up, and sets at each other in the course of a single scene. Isaac’s wife died six years ago and we meet the Geldharts deep in resentment, pain and dysfunction. Sarah, who works for a TV show, is seeing a married older man. She’s trying to broker peace, but in doing so, she keeps falling back on lines like “it’s only books” which will win her no love. Dorn’s work is understated and touching, making it easy to see why Sarah is probably the family’s black sheep.

Butler doesn’t delve as easily into Aaron’s feelings of conflict (assuming the character has any) over the power-grab. Officious and almost prissy, the actor suggests a middle manager rather than a would-be company usurper. As older son Martin, a cancer survivor who can’t detatch himself from his family no matter how hard he tries, Lewis brings out the character’s bitterness and his heart. The actor keeps us in Martin’s corner and – through his generosity – in Isaac’s as well.

Martin is the only Geldhart child who appears in the second act, the link between the intractable Isaac Geldhart we have met in Act 1 and the half-broken man three years later who is reduced to selling off his precious books, obsessing over a Hitler doodle on a postcard and relying on the kindness of strangers. Into this space walks a social worker, Marge Hacket (Marcia Cross), sent by Aaron to determine Isaac’s competency. The woman has a backstory of her own that intersects with Isaac’s and their interplay makes this second act almost feel like a separate play. Playing a couple of semi-broken souls who have to put up tough fronts, Cross and Morrow develop a smooth rapport.

Scenic designer Ryan Wilson rings the perimeter of his efficient single room set with a cut out of the New York skyline and a window looks out over a cityscape. Both the Kreeger/Geldhart conference room and – in Act 2 - Isaac’s Gramercy Park apartment could probably benefit from the presence of more physical books, but the scenery along with Michael Mullen’s costumes (Isaac racks up thousands of dollars of credit card debt spent on fine suits) do the trick.

The role of Isaac Geldhart will long be associated with frequent Baitz player Ron Rifkin who created the role and played it in New York, Los Angeles and on film. Still, watching Rob Morrow burrow into this damaged, principled lion of a man, coming face to face with the consequences of his choices is to witness a riveting melding of actor and role. Baitz’s play is not one for the carcinogenic pile of trash. Not even close.

THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE plays through Sept. 1 at 3000 Airport Ave, Santa Monica.

Photo of Barret T. Lewis, Tina Dorn and Rob Morrow by Alex Neher.

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