Other Desert Cities
Opening Night: November 3, 2011
Closing: June 17, 2012
Theater: Booth Theatre
In Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities Brooke Wyeth (to be played by Rachel Griffiths who is making her Broadway debut), a once promising novelist, returns home after a six year absence to celebrate Christmas in Palm Springs with her parents, former members of the Reagan inner-circle (Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach), her brother (Thomas Sadoski) and her aunt (to be played by Judith Light). When Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir focusing on an explosive chapter in the family’s history, the holiday reunion is thrown into turmoil and the Wyeths are both bound together and torn apart as they struggle to come to terms with their past.
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November 3, 2011
It’s pretty ironic that Jon Robin Baitz’s new play, "Other Desert Cities," has finally made it to Broadway. It was originally supposed to premiere on Broadway, but Baitz, seeking less pressure, opted to have Lincoln Center Theater do it Off-Broadway instead. Following stellar reviews last winter, a move to Broadway was all but inevitable.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 3, 2011
Logistics prevented an immediate Broadway transfer last winter of Jon Robin Baitz’s "Other Desert Cities," despite its great reviews and hot ticket sales Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Now here it is, on the Great White Way where it always belonged, but with two crucial roles re-cast, again due to logistics. Have Baitz and director Joe Mantello kept the magic intact? You bet. They’ve even done some subtle tinkering that makes the proceedings even more effective, if that’s possible. With Rachel Griffiths and Judith Light stepping seamlessly into the tight five-person ensemble and delivering performances every bit as satisfying as those of Elizabeth Marvel and Linda Lavin, "Cities" remains both grandly entertaining and deeply perceptive in its portrait of a loving but dysfunctional American family riven by political and personal differences.
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November 3, 2011
Rachel Griffiths — best known for her television roles on Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters — makes an auspicious Broadway debut in Jon Robin Baitz’s compelling drama, Other Desert Cities, at the Booth Theatre under the sure-handed direction of Joe Mantello.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 3, 2011
Jon Robin Baitz’s "Other Desert Cities," which had a very successful run at Lincoln Center Theater last winter, has now transferred to Broadway, where it will surely do at least as well—and deservedly so. Though not without flaw, Mr. Baitz’s latest play, a group portrait of a Reaganesque show-business family whose members are keeping secrets from one another, is for the most part both soundly made and emotionally persuasive, and Stockard Channing, Rachel Griffiths, Stacy Keach, Judith Light and Thomas Sadoski are as good a cast as anyone could hope for.
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November 3, 2011
All family reunions should be this satisfying. Having spent months apart and suffered losses that might have leveled a less resilient clan, the Wyeths of “Other Desert Cities” have reassembled on Broadway at the Booth Theater, and absence and adversity (as they’re supposed to but so seldom do) have made them closer than ever. This means they have even more power to nurture, delight and wound one another and, not incidentally, move to tears anyone who visits them.
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