(*) OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz, Inception Theatre at San Antonio Performing Arts, September 6 - 29, 2013

UPDATE: Feature by Deborah Martin of the San Antonio Express-News, September 3












presents

Other Desert Cities

by Jon Robin Baitz
directed by Mandy Epley
September 6 - 29, 2013
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

showcasing at Performing Arts San Antonio's new theatre which is located at 15705 San Pedro Avenue, San Antonio, Texas 78232 - click for map

Tickets $25 - available on-line

Other Desert Cities is a play by Jon Robin Baitz. The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011 and transferred to Broadway in November 2011, marking the Broadway debut of a Baitz play.The play was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Other Desert Cities involves a family with differing political views and a long-held family secret.

Christy Beckham, Michael Burger (photo: Inception Theatre)

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Other Desert Cities by Jon Robert Baitz, Austin Playhouse, January 25 - February 24, 2013

by Michael Meigs

In an age when 'dysfunctional' all too often is appended to 'American family' in the U.S. theatre, Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities spends much of its two acts appearing to explore yet another meltdown.


Lyman and Polly Wyeth are prosperous California retirees with backgrounds in Hollywood and Republican politics. Their children are several sorts of messes. The older son got into drugs and then into political violence, getting implicated in a deadly firebombing before disappearing forever from a ferry in the waters outside Seattle. The daughter, Brooke, a promising writer, wound up in a psychiatric institution and is only now crawling back to reality. The younger son's a cynical survivor who produces a television show where small claims are decided by a retired judge and a jury of freaks.

Rick Roemer, Lara Toner (photo: C. Loveless)

Just your average California family, so to speak. And to add some zip, it's Christmas, and the recovering daughter has written a tell-all autobiography that she wants her parents to embrace.


Baitz's script is carefully crafted, loading us up with exposition over the first twenty minutes or so and only slightly stretching our creduility. We're helped by Toner's casting, for Babs George and Rick Roemer give their characters good solid Republican self-assurance. She comfortably inhabits the sharp-tongued, steadily bibulous mother, and Roemer radiates warmth and charisma, no doubt much like that of Ronald Reagan. 

Brooke the wayward daughter is annoying. She suffers from cognitive dissonance, determined to publish the exposé and yet wanting the victims of the revelations, her family, to approve the exercise. Lara Toner does the best she can with the character's whining intensity.


This is a spiritually amorphous California-American family, not anchored anywhere except in bourgeois comfort. Polly is from a Jewish family, but she's not in the least engaged in faith; Lyman's a man of bonhomie and appearances. That is, at least in part, what the play's about: what is really important to these characters, deep down, as Polly threatens to punish their daughter by refusing to speak to her ever again?

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz, Austin Playhouse at Highland Mall, January 25 - February 24, 2013

(performing in 2013 at Highland Malll -- click for instructions and map)

presents

Other Desert Cities

by Jon Robin Baitz

directed by Don Toner

January 25 – February 24, 2013

Thursdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m.

Austin Playhouse at Highland Mall, 6001 Airport Blvd., Austin, TX 78752

WEB: www.austinplayhouse.com

TICKETS: $28 Thursday/Friday, $30 Saturday/Sunday

$37 Opening Night with champagne reception: Friday, January 25

Box office 512.476.0084 or online at: www.austinplayhouse.com

DISCOUNTS: All student tickets are half-price.

Austin Playhouse is proud to bring Austin audiences Baitz’ powerful family drama. In the award-winning Other Desert Cities, Baitz brings us an emotionally charged play about a family coming to terms with long-held secrets. “Baitz’ latest familial drama manages to be funny, cutting, and illuminating. Secrets, lies, and betrayals play out against a backdrop of Californian affluence and restraint. This is rich dysfunction – zingers are delivered with a whiskey chaser.” –The Huffington Post

Brooke Wyeth (Lara Toner) returns home to Palm Springs after a six-year absence and a mental breakdown to celebrate Christmas with her parents (Babs George and Rick Roemer), her brother (Jacob Trussell), and her aunt (Bernadette Nason). 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.

The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011 to critical acclaim and transferred to Broadway in November 2011, marking the Broadway debut of a Baitz play. The play was named Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. It was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (Click to view Wikipedia article)

Jon Robin Baitz’s plays include My Beautiful Goddamn City, Ten Unknowns, The Paris Letter, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or Schmucks, A Fair Country, The Substance of Fire, and an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. His television credits include The West Wing, Alias, and Brothers and Sisters, which he created.
Production Team Don Toner is the director. Buffy Manners is the costume designer. Don Day is the lighting designer. Set Design is by Don Toner and Patrick Crowley.
Critical Praise "The most richly enjoyable new play for grown-ups that New York has known in many seasons…In his most fully realized play to date, Mr. Baitz makes sure our sympathies keep shifting among the members of the wounded family portrayed here. Every one of them emerges as selfish, loving, cruel, compassionate, irritating, charming and just possibly heroic…leaves you feeling both moved and gratifyingly sated." —NY Times. "Astutely drawn…juicy and surprising." —NY Daily News. "Spending time with these messed-up, complicated people is a genuine pleasure." —NY Post. "Power, passion, and superbly crafted palaver stippled with blowdarts of wit—this is what Baitz does best." —New York Magazine.
Austin Playhouse at Highland Mall
Austin Playhouse is currently performing at Highland Mall. The mall’s South entrance is the most convenient to Austin Playhouse. Take the escalator down to the lower level and turn right. Austin Playhouse is on your right, across from the Express.

Austin Playhouse is a professional theatre currently performing its 13th season. Under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Don Toner and Associate Artistic Director Lara Toner, Austin Playhouse has grown from a three-play season on the campus of Concordia University, to a year-round operation producing an average of eight plays a year. Austin Playhouse is currently building its own two-performance venue space in the heart of the new Mueller Redevelopment Town Center, adjacent to the new Austin Children’s Museum.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)