In the 15 years since Other Desert Cities debuted on Broadway, nothing has changed… and so much has gotten extraordinarily worse. One welcome difference in the theatre community is wider demand for a greater diversity of stories told by a greater diversity of artists. Which made the comparatively quick return of a play that is literally about rich white people—by a seemingly rich white cisgender man with a fancy cast of seemingly rich white people and directed by another seemingly white cisgender man—somewhat surprising to me.
But as I watched the revival of Other Desert Cities and listened to the cast speak Jon Robin Baitz’s remarkably rewarding dialogue, I realized this story is important to retell right now because it’s about, among other things, the desperation of a privileged elite to hold on to their power and how ruthlessly they’ll maneuver to maintain it. It interrogates how the old guard has enjoyed such enduring dominance and what responsibility younger generations have in challenging it. It offers one explanation of how we’ve arrived at this shameful moment in American history. And it reminds us of what we actually have in common, the humanity that coexists with hypocrisy.
It’s also really fucking funny.
On Christmas Eve 2004, we meet the Wyeth family. Patriarch Lyman (Ed Harris) and matriarch Polly (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Hollywood lightweights turned politically conservative heavyweights à la Ronald and Nancy Reagan, are excited to celebrate at their Palm Springs country club with their visiting children, who have similarly rarefied careers. There’s breezy younger brother Trip (Joe Keery), a reality show producer, and older sister Brooke (Lily Rabe), a novelist who’s publishing her first book in six years. Brooke is coming out not only of writer’s block but also of a long struggle with depression, and Polly worries her daughter might have a future of instability as extreme as her own sister’s, recovering alcoholic Silda (Allison Janney).[1]
The impact of Brooke’s manuscript on the Wyeths is the inciting incident for the drama. In 2026—after countless insider publications like John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened, Mark Esper’s A Sacred Oath, and Mike Pence’s So Help Me G-d, with their respective accounts of Trump’s wielding foreign policy for personal gain, potential use of the military against American protestors, and desire to prevent the peaceful transfer of power—the notion that a book could change the world feels significantly quainter than it already did in 2011. The bombshell revelations in those political tell-alls did not seem to inspire any material change, though admittedly we don’t know the full repercussions for the authors’ personal lives and families.
At the same time, the power of language is a recurring theme in Baitz’s canon and deeply embedded in this play. The eloquence of the dramatis personae feels as heightened as it does in scripts by Aaron Sorkin, with whom Janney, Harris, and the original Polly and Trip, Stockard Channing and Thomas Sadoski, have all worked to great acclaim. The overlap isn’t coincidental. With both Baitz and Sorkin, you sometimes hear the playwright more than the characters, and it can take actors of great facility to make the density of their text sound extemporaneous, human, and varied from role to role. However, it’s less problematic in Other Desert Cities, where all the characters are cut from the same cloth. Moreover, Baitz’s words are so beautiful and so insightful, and the construction of his play is so immaculate, they become seductive.
The playwright shines so brightly, it offsets the spectrum of effectiveness in his starry cast. The supernova here is Louis-Dreyfus, sublimely at ease in a Broadway debut that makes spectacular use of her famous comic timing and reveals a dramatic gravity we’ve rarely seen from her. She isn’t the imperious elder Channing was, yet she’s just as steely while also somehow more human. She also has excellent chemistry with Harris, who comes across as every bit the charismatic movie star he and his character are.[2] He tends to push in his most dramatic moments, but he brings a tenderness to the role, especially in quieter sequences with Louis-Dreyfus, that’s surprisingly touching.
Keery also makes a fantastic Broadway debut, listening, responding, and acting with his whole body in a way that many other actors who cut their teeth in television don’t. Although he may be the least familiar name on the Other Desert Cities marquee to many, he won’t be for long. Janney lacks the Jewish sensibility that’s essential to her role and also works a bit too hard in “give me my awards” sections.[3] Nevertheless, Still, Janney’s way with a punchline is impeccable, as is her ability to convey Silda’s sadomasochistic intellect.
As Brooke, Rabe should be the play’s North Star. Despite her record of solid work on camera and onstage (with apologies to Daryl Hannah, Rabe was the best Annelle I’ve ever seen in Steel Magnolias and should have been Tony nominated), she never believably comes off as a real person here. It’s a bizarrely and extremely effortful performance—physically, vocally, and emotionally—from a woman who has even managed to bring naturalism to American Horror Story. Director John Benjamin Hickey surely shares some of the responsibility, but all of the actresses I’ve seen play Brooke, including Rachel Griffiths and Elizabeth Marvel, have seemed affected, so Baitz may also bear some of the blame.
Where Hickey succeeds phenomenally is in making a cerebral play not just accessible but gloriously cathartic. I cried. A few folks around me sobbed. Yes, it’s a sign of the polarized times, the painful divisions in our families that so many of us are wrestling with as never before. It is also what Hickey highlights in Baitz’s rich text about grief and sacrifice and the longing for real connection with our loved ones—themes that outlast any political regime. With the help of Scott Pask’s beautiful set and Natasha Katz’s atmospheric lighting, Hickey transports us to a desert mansion where there isn’t a dry eye in the house.
the not-a-bottom line
🌈🌈🌈🌈 (out of five)
a guide to ticket-buying
Tickets for Other Desert Cities are grotesquely expensive. Prime orchestra seats are selling for around $1,000 apiece. I love theatre. I love this play. I love this production. But I wouldn’t even pay $1,000 if the ticket included a threesome with Ed Harris and Joe Keery plus a side of bacon.
A digital lottery is available through Lucky Seat. Per Playbill.com’s handy breakdown of rush, lottery, and standing-room policies, winners may purchase two tickets at $49 each.
A digital rush, also $49 a ticket, is available through the TodayTix app.
[1] For transparency’s sake, I should mention that Rabe and I overlapped in undergrad, where, in a variety of productions and a creative fiction class we simultaneously took, it was clear she inherited both her mother Jill Clayburgh’s talent as an actress and her father David Rabe’s talent as a writer. I don’t feel that a friendly acquaintanceship from approximately 20 years ago prevents me from being fair in commenting on her performance.
[2] Ed Harris: If you’re reading this, I don’t care about the age difference between us. You can GET IT. Especially if you bring that wig.
[3] Playing the same role, Judith Light won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for the original Broadway production, and Linda Lavin was nominated for Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Lucille Lortel Awards for the off-Broadway production that preceded it.