Families are interesting. They all come with their own unique histories, prejudices, and secrets. Jon Robin Batz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated drama “Other Desert Cities,” set in the years following the September 11 terrorist attacks, explores harmful ideologies, grief, depression, memory and how secrets can wrap themselves around a family, slowly strangling it from the inside out. Revived for the first time since 2011, this production directed by John Benjamin Hickey is warm, funny and at times painful.
“Other Desert Cities” began on Christmas Eve 2004 at the Wyeths’ luxurious 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), lives in Los Angeles and works as a producer for an early reality TV show. Their daughter, Brooke (Lily Rabe), is a writer who has emerged from a nearly decade-long battle with debilitating depression. Until now, she has lived in seclusion on the East Coast. The Wythes have an especially full house because Polly’s sister, Silda (Allison Janney), is living with them after another stint in rehab due to alcohol addiction.
The play begins in a spacious, immaculate beige living room, decorated with a giant Christmas tree topped with a Star of David (honoring Polly’s legacy), courtesy of scenic designer Scott Pask. Polly, Lyman and the children return from playing tennis at a nearby country club. The four men bicker and fuss over each other, mostly because of their opposing political views. The elder Wyeth is a staunch Republican. Tripp and Brooke are angry at their parents’ casual racism as they decide together how to spend the rest of the day before making plans to attend a lobster Christmas Eve dinner at the club.
Although Brooke has finally headed to the West Coast after a six-year absence, her motivation isn’t just a friendly visit. Instead, she eagerly tells her parents that her second book is scheduled to be published in the new year. And it is not a work of fiction, as Lyman and Polly had hoped. Instead, it is a memoir that describes the most tragic event in the family’s history. Brooke writes about her older brother Henry, who decades earlier had committed suicide due to his involvement in a cult bombing that killed one person. This was such a terrible event in the Wyeths’ lives that neither Lyman nor Polly could bear to speak their eldest son’s name. In fact, after his death he fled Los Angeles to hide in the desert.
Brooke’s revelation effectively ends the fun. Lyman initially tries to be a peacemaker, saying that he will not read the book, but he asks Brooke to refrain from publishing it until after he and Polly die. In contrast, Polly reads the manuscript and is immediately filled with anguish and all-consuming anger. His solution is to disown Brooke, should this memoir ever come to light. A series of violent shouting matches ensue between mother and daughter, before Lyman finally reveals a long-hidden secret, bringing Brooke to her knees. After all, the truth often depends on who tells it.
“Other Desert Cities” is a brilliant piece of theatre, not only because of the subject matter but because of the performances. The entire cast works as a seamless ensemble, switching from sharp wit to Polly’s claim that satire is “only for teens and lesbians” to painfully heartbreaking and volatile outbursts of a family built on a foundation of lies and hypocrisy.
A masterful portrait of 21st-century Americana centered on a family divided by politics, ideology and hidden history, “The Other Desert Town” is smart, authentic and deeply satisfying. Dark and terrifying in one breath and hilariously raw in the next, this is a drama whose intensity has never felt so profound.