Out of the Past

Review: Other Desert Cities
Booth Theater, New York
June 9, 2012


Last weekend in New York, we went to Other Desert Cities the night before the Tony Awards. If there were an award for ensemble acting, attention should be paid to Joe Mantello's lacerating production. I'm glad I caught the show in New York, with five go-for-broke performances that filled in the cracks of a solid but often familiar play.


Well-off Republicans Polly and Lyman Wyeth (Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach) are spending Christmas in Palm Springs for the first time in years with her alcoholic sister Silda (Judith Light) and their children: courtroom reality TV producer Trip (Thomas Sadoski) and formerly hospitalized novelist Brooke (Elizabeth Marvel), who's overcome crippling depression. But Polly is quick to suspect that Brooke's newest "novel" is something far more personal and damaging to the family. Sure enough: it's a memoir of her other brother, who committed suicide.

Stockard Channing anchors the cast as the caustic, no-nonsense matriarch who once made Nancy Reagan cry at dinner. She will keep the Wyeths' reputation at any cost, even if it means disowning her daughter. Channing's always had a quick wit and sharp tongue, employed here to harrowing (even villainous) effect. As her husband, a former Western movie-star, Keach plays a man overshadowed by his wife and his spectacular cinematic death scenes. It's to Keach's credit that Lyman, so out of touch and haunted by his past, doesn't recede into the background. Neither does Sadoski, sincere as the do-no-wrong son who tries not to take sides.


Marvel's Brooke is on the edge, but she's a strong warrior against Channing's Polly. Her histrionics, though, sometimes feel out of sync with the other actors, pushing the emotional instabilities we already know Brooke suffers from. She's best in her scenes with Light, who starts as comic relief but reveals her determination to have the book published. Silda appears dimmed by the years, even if her outward wisecracks say otherwise.


Jon Robin Baitz's play is in the tradition of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, from the acerbic jabs to the enclosed setting, with the family trapped out in the open desert landscape, isolated but unable to hide. And like Virginia Woolf, everyone has their juicy outburst, and unconscionable secrets are excavated. But Other Desert Cities depends upon its twist ending to be satisfying drama, a revelation that warrants more aftermath than we see. How did they forgive each other? How did they move on from the unthinkable? There's plenty of acid along the ride, but I left wondering if we'd already been down this road.