Penny Cullen and Wendy Jardine in BLT’s May 2016 production of Other Desert Cities, directed by Jane Buckland (Photo: Martin Phillips)
Fri 6 – Sat 14 May 2016 at 7.45pm (not Sun 8)
Other Desert Cities
by Jon Robin Baitz
Directed by Jane Buckland
Read the Sardines magazine’s review of this show
Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs after a six year absence to celebrate Christmas with her parents, her brother and her aunt. Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family’s history – a wound they don’t want reopened. In effect, she draws a line in the sand and dares them all to cross it. Her wealthy Republican parents, former friends of the Reagans and stalwarts of their local country club, are wary and suspicious while her younger brother is playful and irreverent. This family drama is fast paced, tautly written and “stippled with blowdarts of wit,” (New York Magazine), as it gradually exposes a family’s past.
This play was first performed in New York in 2011 to rave reviews. The New York Times described it as, “The most richly enjoyable new play for grown-ups that New York has known in many seasons” and The New York Post said: “Spending time with these messed up, complicated people is a genuine pleasure.”
CAST:
Brooke Wyeth : Madeleine Jullian
Polly Wyeth : Wendy Jardine
Silda Grauman : Penny Cullen
Lyman Wyeth : Bruce Wallace
Trip Wyeth : Benjamin Vorono