Ten Unknowns

Called a "cunning and elegant play ... [with] deft storytelling" (John Lahr, The New Yorker), Ten Unknowns, John Robin Baitz's latest work, is an explosive drama about art -- and what happens when it becomes commerce. Malcolm Raphelson is a painter who was at the top of the art world -- until the critical vogue turned from realism to the abstract expressionist work of others. He has been in self-imposed exile in Mexico for decades, until dealer Trevor Fabricant decides it's time for a retrospective. Trevor sends Judd, a talented and tormented young painter, to serve as Malcolm's assistant and unofficial minder. When they are joined by a beautiful young student, their tense equilibrium is upset. In Ten Unknowns, Baitz portrays, in the words of Linda Winer of Newsday, "a world conflicted with questions about the tyranny of art fashion and quality, about the benefits and blind spots in the outsider sensibility, about the warring American impulses for good and for meddling." "Baitz is without peer among his contemporaries in creating dialogue that spontaneously conveys a character's social context and moral limitations." -- Ben Brantley, The New York Times "A darkly funny, brilliantly desperate comedy.... Ten Unknowns vibrates with vital voices." -- Donald Lyons, New York Post

Called a "cunning and elegant play . . . with] deft story-telling" (John Lahr, The New Yorker), Ten Unknowns, John Robin Baitz's latest work, is an explosive drama about art -- and what happens when it becomes commerce.

Malcolm Raphelson is a painter who was at the top of the art world -- until the critical vogue turned from realism to the abstract expressionist work of others. He has been in self-imposed exile in Mexico for decades, until dealer Trevor Fabricant decides it's time for a retrospective. Trevor sends Judd, a talented and tormented young painter, to serve as Malcolm's assistant and unofficial minder. When they are joined by a beautiful young student, their tense equilibrium is upset. In Ten Unknowns, Baitz portrays, in the words of Linda Winer of Newsday, "a world conflicted with questions about the tyranny of art fashion and quality, about the benefits and blind spots in the outsider sensibility, about the warring American impulses for good and for meddling."