5 Reasons to See Other Desert Cities on Broadway

Christmas with the Wyeths is no holiday. In Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, a family gathering in Palm Springs brings old resentments, political differences and long-buried secrets to the surface. The 2011 play returns to Broadway with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Lily Rabe and Joe Keery. Directed by John Benjamin Hickey, the revival is playing at the Hudson Theatre. Here are five reasons to see it.

1. Broadway welcomes two terrific newcomers.
Louis-Dreyfus and Keery arrive on Broadway with two very different approaches to a family in turmoil. Louis-Dreyfus brings her famously impeccable comic timing to Polly Wyeth, a woman accustomed to having things her way. Her performance is controlled and precise and deliciously unpredictable. Keery, best known for Stranger Things, is wonderfully natural and disarming as her son Trip. His easygoing manner and grounded reactions suggest someone who’s lived through enough family drama to know when to stay out of it, even if he sees more than he lets on.

2. A no-gimmicks drama for grown-ups.
Baitz has a gift for creating articulate, complicated people who know exactly how to get under one another's skin. His humor is incisive, and he trusts the audience to keep up. In Other Desert Cities, a family gathering becomes a battle over whose version of the past deserves to be believed. It’s a pleasure to see a play that takes its characters’ ideas seriously and offers plenty to discuss afterward.

3. Even the pillows are perfect.
Scott Pask’s transporting set places us inside the Wyeths’ Palm Springs home, a perfectly preserved slice of old Hollywood glamour that speaks to the family's wealth, privilege and studied California casualness. Natasha Katz’s lighting captures the desert sunshine, while Tom Broecker’s costumes and Robert Pickens’ hair and wigs truly make you feel that these are people comfortable rubbing elbows with Ron and Nancy after a game of tennis at the club. Everything is arranged just so, which is exactly how Polly likes it. Appearances aren’t everything, but for Polly, they’re practically a full-time job.

4. This family has serious star power.
Janney is charisma personified, and she’s great fun as Silda, Polly’s off-kilter sister, whose grown-out dye job (courtesy of hair and wig designer Pickens), gray at the roots and brown in the back, tells you plenty about how differently the sisters' lives have turned out. Harris slips convincingly into the role of Lyman, a former Hollywood star whose charm and polish have served him well in politics. Lily Rabe brings considerable intensity to Brooke, a woman struggling to reconcile her family’s version of the past with her own. It’s a demanding role, with emotional shifts that call on Rabe’s considerable stage experience.

5. Everyone has their side of the story.
Set in 2004, the play’s political divisions are inseparable from the family’s painful history. As Rabe recently told Broadway.com, “You really do root for everyone and you can turn on everyone.” It’s an apt description of the way Baitz draws us into the Wyeths’ disagreements, allowing our sympathies to shift as we hear more of their story. And after all the accusations, arguments and shifting loyalties, Baitz knows just where to leave us.

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