Other Desert Cities

I guess the wait is over: Jon Robin Baitz has come out of his slump. Way out. When was the last really great Robbie Baitz play? Some insist it was the widely hailed, short-listed for the Pulitzer, A Fair Country, but I was one who thought Mizlansky/Zilinsky was a fine effort.

Either way, it's been at least ten years. It's true, he wrote for The West Wing, he is executive producer of his own show--he's a big success on that other coast.

But I have to imagine that a playwright wants to write plays. I certainly have to imagine that a playwright of Baitz's stature must long to write a play that resonates deeply, that hits the boards running. Well, make it over to The Mitzi Newhouse, cause JRB has done just that.

Other Desert Cities is the kind of play you know you're going to like just from looking at the set (and this is no mere set--it is a set that evokes the perfect mood long before you know what that mood exactly is: thanks again to John Lee Beatty). I now count it in the great pantheon of finely observed, let's-get-this-shit-said-already, family dramas. The Sisters Rozenzweig, Three Tall Women, How I Learned to Drive, August: Osage County...

Really. The thing takes off from the first beats. The characters do not hold back: everything is risked. The knowingness of being in this family does not give rise to caution. No. This time, at least, they are going to be heard! And we hear them. In every finely-honed cut, every laser-like jab. And here's the thing: we root for them all. Even Stockard Channing's vainglorious semi-monster of a mother. We root.

And this is a consummate ensemble. Stockard Channing; Stacy Keach as the impossibly retreating father; Thomas Sadowski (so memorable in reasons to be pretty, even better here) as the successful brother on the verge of something--perhaps liberation, maybe a nervous breakdown; Linda Lavin as the booze-soaked sister in residence, and the marvelous Elizabeth Marvel. Marvel is putting on quite a show. I won't soon forget, as it registered on her face: the look of deepest hurt, turned at once to regret, despair, and shimmering with rage--it was a thing to behold.

Hey, let me not forget to say how beautifully, and with such deft hand this production is directed. Joe Mantello, Baitz's former life partner, and frequent collaborator, brings a complete vision of where the play is going and how he wants to get there. Even the curtain call has the artful precision of a master of the craft.

When a friend of mine, hearing my review, asked if I thought it could make the move to Broadway, I told him yes. I hope it does. That is where this play belongs, and this is where we welcome Jon Robin Baitz back, into the firmament.

Ron Gallen