Susan Granger’s review of “Other Desert Cities” (Booth Theater – 2011/2012 season)
Truth hurts – it stuns, shocks and stings. That’s why Jon Robin Baitz’s dazzlingly dry, witty observations about parents and children, secrets and blame have such resounding resonance.
Patrician former movie star-turned-United States Ambassador Lyman Wyeth (Stacy Keach) and his self-righteous, Jewish wife, Polly (Stockard Channing), are Old-Guard Hollywood conservatives, now living in retirement Palm Springs. Currently joining them in residence is Polly’s bitter, bohemian sister, Silda (Judith Light), a recovering alcoholic and Polly’s former screenwriting partner.
It’s Christmas, 2004, as their grown children are join them for the holidays. Depressive Brooke (Rachel Griffiths) is an anguished novelist whose upcoming book spills long-kept family secrets, while Trip (Thomas Sadoski) is a laid-back ‘reality’ television producer. An older child, Henry, is there in spirit only, having committed suicide after being implicated a fatal Weather Underground-style bombing which mortified and socially ostracized his parents during the Reagan era. It’s this shame that Brooke publicly reveals.
After creating ABC-TV’s “Brothers & Sisters,” Baitz is in familiar territory, exploring social dysfunction, hypocritical politics and tantalizing family drama. His barbed dialogue crackles as the family painfully probes its past. Ironically, Baitz was fired in 2007 by ABC executives because he wanted the series to take a darker, more dramatic tone, while they insisted on retaining its sit-com sensibility.
Stacy Keach and Stockard Channing are so adept that, during their eventual ‘confessionals,’ they drop their voices softly, keeping the rapt audience, literally, on the edge of their sets. Making her Broadway debut after only two weeks of rehearsal, Australian-born Rachel Griffiths (who played the older sister in “Brothers & Sisters”) is superb as the overtly confrontational East Coast liberal who breaks the barrier of things that ‘polite,’ well-bred Republicans simply don’t discuss.
Deftly directed by Baitz’s frequent collaborator, Joe Mantello, it’s a redemptive tale of reconciliation, made even more believable by the entitled authenticity of John Lee Beatty’s sleekly chic set and David Zinn’s costumes.
For those unfamiliar with the geography of California, the title comes from a roadside sign on Interstate 10, indicating the way to Palm Springs and Other Desert Cities.