Dazzling company adds to ‘Other Desert Cities’ success
By Charlene Baldridge | SDUN Theater Critic
Jon Robin Baitz’s 2011 Broadway hearth drama “Other Desert Cities” is set on Christmas Eve 2004. The Wyeth family – or at least what’s left of it – gathers at the elder Wyeths’ luxurious Palm Springs home.
With its view towards the mountains, freestanding fireplace and spacious grace, Alexander Dodge’s multilevel set is breathtaking. So is York Kennedy’s lighting, which allows the audience to witness the passage of time as the family parries, thrusts and pontificates.
A staunch Republican patriarch Lyman Wyeth (Old Globe Associate Artist Robert Foxworth) is a retired diplomat and a former movie actor. His acerbic wife Polly – surely the mother from hell – is played by Associate Artist Kandis Chappell, longtime portrayer of powerful women. Polly’s major joy is verbal attack and destruction, all in the name of love and betterment, of course. Lyman’s tactic is avoidance.
Gathered around are Polly’s sister Silda (Associate Artist Robin Pearson Rose), recently released from rehab and living on the family largess; the Wyeths’ adult son, Trip (Andy Bean), who produces television reality shows; and the adult daughter, Brooke (Dana Green), who’s had her share of breakdowns over the past six years (she lives in a cottage in Long Island’s Sag Harbor), has emerged triumphant with a book manuscript under her arm.
The book is a memoir, not a novel like her first success. A familiar plot device, Brooke seeks not so much to gain her relatives’ approval and permission, as to forewarn them. The memoir concerns her late brother’s suicide and places the blame where it lies, at least in her reality.
The ensuing dialogue, a battle of words and wills, is exceptionally funny and appallingly deadly. Fetid secrets are excavated and onlookers’ sympathies are knocked around like ping-pong balls. Who is sane? Who is pure? Who is culpable? Who is the most grotesque?
As fascinating as it is disturbingly familiar, the play scrutinizes right-wing politics, the Iraq war and the secrets, alliances and motivations of family. None comes out smelling like a rose.
Richard Seer, who has been director of The Globe-USD graduate theatre program for 20 years, proves once again that he is a fearless explorer of the human psyche. His company is dazzling. Also to be applauded are costume designer Charlotte Devaux’s Palm Springs casual attire and Paul Peterson’s sound.
At the time of the play’s New York premiere, it was praised and Baitz’s return after a long time fallow was applauded; he was away in TV land with “Brothers & Sisters,” fighting his own battles.
From an interview in The Old Globe program, it appears that the Wyeths’ several demons are, in certain measure, Baitz’s as well. Such intensity is intellectually stimulating as well as exhausting. One could return countless times and still not get it all.
“Other Desert Cities”
WHERE: The Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way (Balboa Park)
WHEN: Sun., Tues. and Wed. at 7 p.m., Thurs. – Sat. at 8 p.m., and Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. through June 2
INFO: 619-23-GLOBE
WEB: theoldglobe.org
