A review of Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, on stage at the Long Beach International City Theatre.
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While the political tangles with the personal in the family dysfunction of the Long Beach ICT’s production of Other Desert Cities, the blurring of abstract ideology with human drama is ultimately tangential. The point is not that the Wyeth family parents Lyman Nicholas Horman) and Polly (Suzanne Ford), modeled after Ronald and Nancy Reagan, clash with liberal daughter Brooke (Ann Noble) about politics to the exasperation of the apolitical Hollywood son, Trip (Blake Anthony Edwards). Rather, the point is that they clash at all. Replace politics with, say, religion and the generational divide would manifest with just as much explosive intensity. To get caught up in choosing sides and indulging the perpetually irritating antagonism of conservatives and liberals, which is easy to do in the play’s first act, is to gloss over the dynamics of (mis)communication that keep the play in motion.
The play opens with the Wyeth children return to their parents’ home in Palm Springs to celebrate Christmas. Habitual arguments over topics such as the war in Iraq resurface, but the concern is mostly over Brooke’s recovery from a long depression and her parents’ fervent desire that she move closer to home rather than live alone in a small East Coast town. It soon becomes clear, however, that the family is orbiting a black hole, initially invisible to us but unquestionably exerting a gravitational pull. Jon Robin Baitz – the playwright whose topnotch The Paris Letter strutted the Kirk Douglas stage a few years ago – craftily builds up the hints and allegations until at last we come to understand the family tragedy. It involves the oldest son Henry, whose suicide is tainted by an association with radical terrorist activity. Complications for the Wyeths arise when Brooke reveals she has written, and sold, a soon-to-be-published memoir about her dearly-loved brother, whose death has left behind questions the family refuses to acknowledge. In a very real sense, the exposé is Brooke’s attempt to speak out in defiance of a family that takes an uneasy, even crippling, refuge in silence.
It’s an excellent and scintillating scenario, well-directed by caryn desai and performed to the usual high ICT standards. Rife with incisive comedy and searing drama delivered through stinging dialogue, Other Desert Cities offers a compelling, albeit tonally uneven, portrait of a family in distress.
Pity, then, that the entire production is capped off by a severely miscalculated conclusion that defies built-up characterizations and undermines the essential dramatic core. In one monstrous revelation which establishes the capital-T Truth about Henry’s death, the play shifts from a nuanced drama about the mutability of truth in differing perspectives to a simple drama about secrecy and revelation. Suddenly, everything that preceded it is rendered moot. Ambiguities are resolved into answers. The fundamental argument about whether Brooke should publish the damning memoir or not – symbolic of the family’s elusive unity – becomes irrelevant because the conflict is no longer about interpreting an event that, initially, resists any sort of closed, final interpretation. Consequences from the revelation deserve to be developed and studied beyond a mere punchline, but forget it. The play wraps up with an unconvincing little coda.
Throughout the performance, we are challenged to sort out who has the most reasonable grasp of reality. Is it the parents, who strenuously avoid anything that might remind them of Henry? Or Brooke, whose fragile mental health, laden with a history of suicidal despair, may have skewed her perspective? What about Polly’s hostile sister Silda (Eileen T’Kaye), an alcoholic dependent whose resentment towards the family manifests itself in covert attempts to influence events? Let us not forget Trip, the producer of a sleazy reality show, whose own delusions Baitz leaves woefully unexamined but, in light of the revelation, are perhaps the biggest of all. I could accept the ending if Baitz had remained true to his characters; I feel there should have been blood on the stage in the sort of bleak ending that best fits a seismic upset. As it is, he evades Brook’s climactic decision to either embrace her warty family at the cost of her self-integrity or embrace authenticity at the cost of permanent estrangement from her parents. The decision is essentially made for by circumstance.
Other Desert Cities, then, runs hot until it flash-freezes into inauthenticity, eliciting a question: recommend the Pulitzer prize-nominated play despite is flaws or condemn it in spite of its strengths? I say, with reservation, that the 4/5ths of the play are worthwhile on their own.
Other Desert Cities. Written by Jon Robin Baitz. Directed by caryn desai. On stage at the Long Beach International City Theatre from June 4 to June 29, 2014. For tickets and information, call 562.436.4610 or visit www.internationalcitytheatre.org.
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