When it comes to producing on Broadway these days, the most creative element is the casting. How else to explain the recent phenomenon of serious dramas often outgrossing big-budget musicals than the preponderance of star names willing to play limited runs? Case in point: the new revival of Other Desert Cities, a play which eked out a respectable seven month run on Broadway in 2011 but is now a sold-out smash hit with tickets selling at stratospheric prices. It’s not because of a newfound interest in Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist drama but rather the killer line-up of an ensemble of Julia-Louis Dreyfus in her Broadway debut, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Joe Keery and Lily Rabe. It’s not surprising that the Playbill cover art features the quintet standing in the desert, staring directly at the camera like a thespian murderers’ row.
The cast certainly knocks it out of the park in this production directed by actor John Bejamin Hickey, who scored a similar commercial triumph with his staging of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite at the same theater. Their delivery of the sharp dialogue in Baitz’s entertaining if overly schematic drama about a California clan squabbling over the revelation of family secrets makes the play feel weightier than it actually is.
The action takes place during Christmastime in 2004 in the lush Palm Springs home (evocatively rendered in Scott Pask’s set design, abetted by Natasha Katz’s apt desert lighting) of solid Republicans Lyman (Harris) and Polly (Dreyfus). Lyman, a former well-known actor who specialized in macho roles, eventually parlayed his fame into an ambassadorship during the Reagan administration but it is now happily retired, while Polly is a former screenwriter of Hollywood comedies.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Joining them for the holidays are Polly’s sharp-tongued, alcoholic sister Silda (Janney), fresh out of rehab; apolitical son Trip (Keery, who made a splash on Netflix’s Stranger Things), the creator of a successful a courtroom-style reality TV show; and liberal daughter Brooke (Rabe), a New York City-based magazine writer and novelist.
What starts out as a happy reunion quickly turns heated when Brooke reveals the details of her latest book, a memoir which is shortly to appear in serialized form in The New Yorker. It concentrates on the story of her brother, who apparently committed suicide years earlier after being involved in a domestic terrorism bombing which claimed the life of an innocent victim.
Needless to say, her parents, who have become established figures on the Republican scene — Ronald and Nancy Reagan were among their closest friends — are horrified to learn of her plans to bring this sordid incident from their past back to public consciousness. The arguments flow in fast and furious fashion, leavened by generous doses of sharp humor and ultimately resulting in a dramatic revelation that upends Brooke’s assumptions about what transpired.
Baitz (The Substance of Fire, Three Hotels), who also created the not dissimilar television series Brothers & Sisters, concentrates more on the domestic than political aspects of the conflict, with mainly predictable results. And the eventual shift from Neil Simon-style one-liners to Eugene O’Neill-style melodrama is handled in less than artful fashion. This is the sort of play in which someone portentously says “Sit down, please” before delivering a revelatory family secret.
But Other Desert Cities also features sympathetic, complex characters who largely defy our expectations, with the result that it’s consistently engrossing nonetheless. There’s little point in comparing this cast to the off-Broadway and Broadway originals, who were superb, except that these players, under Hickey’s too relaxed direction, don’t quite bring the same edge. Dreyfus seems a bit miscast, easily scoring big laughs with her expert comic delivery but not successfully conveying her character’s rancorous nature. The same could be said of Janney, also very amusing but not fully convincing as someone supposedly ravaged by the effects of alcoholism. Harris, adorned with a distracting if appropriate blond wig, plays his role perfectly in mostly understated fashion with the exception of a mock death scene that brings down the house.
The real acting linchpins of the production are Keery, making an outstanding Broadway debut with his sharp turn as the acerbic Trip and scoring a triumph with his second act monologue, and Rabe, deeply affecting as the daughter who undergoes the play’s most seismic shift. The two younger performers may not be at the top of the billing, but they prove the evening’s MVPs.
Other Desert Cities opened October 18, 2026, at the Hudson Theatre and runs through January 17, 2027. Tickets and information: otherdesertcitiesbroadway.com
