Second Stage Theater might easily be one of my favorite companies in New York City, offering diverse and prevalent theater for modern audiences.  The stakes and tensions run high in their production of Jon Robin Baitz's "Substance of Fire", a phenomenal family drama exploring dynamics of relationships, posturing and self-destruction.

Who would think the process of book publishing could be so riveting?  In the Spring of 1987, the three Geldhart children meet with their father, Isaac Geldhart, in the conference room of Kreeger/Geldhart Publishers; they are embroiled in a family-business dispute over the direction of the company: Isaac has plans to publish a six-volume scholarly work on Nazi medical experiments, while his son Aaron thinks that publishing a more commercial novel may be the only think to keep the company from going under.

Director Trip Cullman does a beautiful job allowing the silence to creep into the play at all the right moments.  The charged battles of dialogue have you on the edge of your seat in great anticipation of who might win the war.  You really get a sense of who these characters are with all the sibling rivalries and alliances infused in the text that lead up to the opening of the play.  When the precocious Martin (Daniel Eric Gold) enters the conference room to greet his sister Sarah (Halley Feiffer), this overarching sense of unfamiliar familiarity permeates the space; it is both visually and emotionally intriguing, setting the perfect tone for this weighted play.

John Noble is absolutely extraordinary as the passionate mind-controlling patriarchal member of this family; we laugh at his undercutting comments and exquisite styles of manipulation as reigns supreme in relation to his children.  Carter Hudson is excellent as Aaron, who fights with all his ingenuity to keep his father from self-destruction that will lead to the flattening of the company. And Charlayne Woodard is splendid as Marge Hackett, a character who shakes things up in Act Two.

"Substance of Fire" has a beautiful way of showing not telling, exploring compromise and forgiveness as we think on the many things we can let go of in order to move forward in life.