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\nLily Rabe as Brooke Wyeth, Joe Keery as Trip Wyeth and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Polly Wyeth in “Other Desert Cities” (Photo: Emilio Madrid)
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1. Broadway welcomes two terrific newcomers.
\nLouis-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\u2019s lived through enough family drama to know when to stay out of it, even if he sees more than he lets on.<\/p>\n
2. A no-gimmicks drama for grown-ups.
\nBaitz 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\u2019s a pleasure to see a play that takes its characters\u2019 ideas seriously and offers plenty to discuss afterward.<\/p>\n
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\nEd Harris as Lyman Wyeth and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Polly Wyeth in “Other Desert Cities” (Photo: Emilio Madrid)
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3. Even the pillows are perfect.
\nScott Pask\u2019s transporting set places us inside the Wyeths\u2019 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\u2019s lighting captures the desert sunshine, while Tom Broecker\u2019s costumes and Robert Pickens\u2019 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\u2019t everything, but for Polly, they\u2019re practically a full-time job.<\/p>\n
4. This family has serious star power.
\nJanney is charisma personified, and she\u2019s great fun as Silda, Polly\u2019s 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\u2019s version of the past with her own. It\u2019s a demanding role, with emotional shifts that call on Rabe\u2019s considerable stage experience.<\/p>\n
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\nAllison Janney as Silda Grauman and Lily Rabe as Brooke Wyeth in “Other Desert Cities” (Photo: Emilio Madrid)
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5. Everyone has their side of the story.
\nSet in 2004, the play\u2019s political divisions are inseparable from the family\u2019s painful history. As Rabe recently told Broadway.com<\/a>, \u201cYou really do root for everyone and you can turn on everyone.\u201d It\u2019s an apt description of the way Baitz draws us into the Wyeths\u2019 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.<\/p>\n