Families are interesting. They all come with their own unique histories, prejudices and mysteries. Jon Robin Baitzโs Pulitzer Prize-nominated play โOther Desert Cities,โ set in the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, explores harmful ideologies, grief, depression, memory and how secrets can wrap themselves around a family, slowly choking it from the inside out. Revived for the first time since 2011, this production, directed by John Benjamin Hickey, is gutting, witty and painfully timely.
โOther Desert Citiesโ opens on Christmas Eve 2004, at the Wyethsโ palatial Palm Springs home. Polly (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Lyman (Ed Harris), a former film writer and old Hollywood movie star, respectively, are thrilled to have their adult children home for the holidays. Their son, Trip (Joe Keery), resides in Los Angeles and works as a producer for early-aughts reality TV shows. Their daughter, Brooke (Lily Rabe), is a writer emerging from a near-decade-long battle with debilitating depression. Until now, she has remained sequestered on the East Coast. The Wyeths have an especially full house since Pollyโs sister, Silda (Allison Janney), is living with them following yet another stint in rehab for her alcohol addiction.
The play opens in a sprawling, spotless beige living room adorned with a massive Christmas tree topped with a Star of David (honoring Pollyโs heritage), courtesy of scenic designer Scott Pask. Polly, Lyman and the kids return from a game of tennis at the nearby country club. The foursome fret and fuss over one another, mostly because of their opposing political views. The elder Wyeths are staunch Republicans. Trip and Brooke cringe at their parentsโ casual racism as they decide together how to spend the rest of the day before planning to indulge in a lobster Christmas Eve dinner back at the club.
Though Brooke has finally ventured to the West Coast after a six-year absence, her motivation isnโt just a friendly visit. Instead, she anxiously reveals to her parents that her second book is set to be published in the new year. And itโs not a work of fiction, as Lyman and Polly expected. Instead, it is a memoir that chronicles the most tragic event in the familyโs history. Brooke has written about her older brother Henry, who died by suicide decades prior following his involvement in a cult bombing which left a man dead. It was such a horrific incident in the Wyethsโ lives that neither Lyman nor Polly can bear to speak their eldest sonโs name. In fact, they fled Los Angeles after his death to hide in the desert.
Brookeโs revelation effectively ends the merriment. Lyman initially tries to be a peacemaker, saying he will not read the book, but he asks that Brooke refrain from publishing it until his and Pollyโs deaths. Polly, by contrast, reads the manuscript and is immediately filled with anguish and all-consuming fury. Her solution is to disown Brooke, should the memoir ever see the light of day. What commences is a series of violent screaming matches between the mother and daughter before Lyman eventually reveals a long-held secret, bringing Brooke to her knees. After all, the truth often depends on who tells it.
โOther Desert Citiesโ is a resounding piece of theater, not simply because of the subject matter but because of the performances. The entire cast works as a seamless ensemble, switching from quippy wit, including Pollyโs assertion that sarcasm is โonly for teenagers and homosexuals,โ to heartbreaking and volatile outbursts rife with the pain of a family standing on a foundation of lies and hypocrisy.
An exquisite portrait of 21st-century Americana, centering on a family divided by politics, ideology and a hidden history, โOther Desert Citiesโ is smart, authentic and deeply satisfying. Dark and haunting in one breath and hilariously raw in the next, itโs a play whose intensity has never felt more profound.
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