Other Desert Cities

I checked out Jon Robin Baitz’s new play Other Desert Cities last night. Alternate title: What Happened to Stockard Channing’s Face? You can’t quite tell in this photo (because there’s a curious lack of close-ups of Ms. Channing on the production site), but she’s looking a little bit like the lovechild of Joan Rivers and a chipmunk these days. Regardless, she’s still fabulous. The play she’s in? Mmm…less so.



What I knew before the show started was that it has a killer cast—Channing, Stacy Keach, Linda Lavin, Thomas Sadoski, and Elizabeth Marvel. What I didn’t know before the show started was that it was written by the guy who created Brothers & Sisters. If I HAD known that, I might have been less surprised when midway through the second act, the entire show dissolved into a crazy soap opera or moronitude (fake word alert).

Here’s the story: daughter writes memoir about family secrets. Family reacts badly. It’s nothing revolutionary or surprising, but hey, I work in publishing, so I thought there were some really interesting questions posed about the appropriateness of cashing in on other people in your life and when writing a book is or isn’t a good idea. So I was cruising along, enjoying the play, if not loving it. Well, I was loving Linda Lavin as the aging hippy aunt with a drinking problem. I could have watched her for hours. She’s no less than brilliant, even if she has to spend the last 20 minutes of the play sitting around quietly watching other people talk.

Here’s the thing: there’s a bit of a twist ending. In retrospect, I think I saw it coming but shoved the possibility aside because: who would do something so stupid? Well…Jon Robin Baitz. For the sake of the two people who stumble across this blog, I won’t spoil it. But let me say this: twenty minutes into the second act, an old lady in front of me got up and left. I couldn’t figure out why she would do this at that particular moment. Then I found out: she’s psychic. She must have had a vision of what was coming. Because while the play has mostly taken pains to this point to give a balanced approach to the various characters, suddenly Elizabeth Marvel stops acting and starts ACTING. She gets so shriek, high-strung, and self-righteous that I decided I would agree with anyone who wasn’t her. Then Stacy Keach starts screaming about bigger secrets, and I watched the play come to pieces.

Beyond the rank stupidity of the ending, Baitz really bashes the audience over the head with political talk. Republicans are soulless. Democrats feel too much. Listen, I’m so far to the left that the right can’t even see me, but I even got exhausted by the facile attempts to explain why conservatives are bad.

The director, Joe Mantello, was sitting right behind me. I avoided the urge to suggest that someone simply remove the last 30 minutes of the play. Ah, restraint. At least SOMEONE in that theater had it.