Other Desert Cities

How weird is this? I already get to talk about a (semi-)new production of something I already wrote about this year. Because Other Desert Cities which I didn't like so much Off-Broadway has transferred to the big leagues, and you know what? I liked it a lot more.

Off-Broadway, I had two major problems with the show. The first was that the twist at the end felt heavy-handed and false. I didn't but it for a second and felt so pissed that the play veered into melodrama when it did that it colored my perception of the whole thing. My second concern was that it pandered to its liberal audience for its entire duration, making a lot of really facile arguments about why Republicans are terrible people. It still panders, for sure, and that plot twist is still the crux upon which the play turns, but it plays so, so much better than it did.

Why? Rachel Griffiths took over for Elizabeth Marvel as the clinically depressed daughter of an uber-conservative couple who has decided to publish a memoir about the tragic loss of her brother years before and its implications for the family. She has come home to get her parent's blessing. Hijinks ensue. Now, Elizabeth Marvel is a pretty amazing actress. Her performance in The Little Foxes was ferocious and heartstopping. But while she played the depressed daughter aspect of her role brilliantly in this show, I was unconvinced by a late-game transition to pathos and rage. Griffiths, on the other hand, seems built for this kind of soapy material. Her early scenes seemed to lack a little of the zip that had been present before, but once the play got moving, it occurred to me that what was happening was that she wasn't approaching any of the material as just lines that she could land or moments she could make sing. She was building to something greater from the very beginning. And by the end, she made a moment that in its first incarnation had me thinking, "You have to be fucking kidding me," into a moment of real beauty.

Judith Light has also taken over a role, replacing Linda Lavin as Aunt Silda. It would be difficult to imagine two more divergent takes on the part of the drunken old screw-up. Lavin was the good-time-gal. The lady you'd love to get drunk with because she'd always make you laugh. Light...well, you'd probably shift a few seats down the bar when she came in. She spotted the ugliest things about the character, and she dove at them. I loved Lavin's approach. But Light's seems to make more sense and probably does a better service to the play itself.

Before I swing over to the last female actor in the play, let it be known that I think Stacy Keach and Thomas Sadoski are giving great, great performances. Sadoski is nothing if not relateable as the moderate screw-up of the family. And Keach is endearing as the low-key father but allows the character his own moments of despair and animosity.

But let's talk about Stockard Channing, shall we? Because she's unreal in this play. As the nipped and tucked ice queen mother who rules the roost, she is acerbic, witty, and brittle, and yet at the same time, she plays the woman's dedication to her family to the hilt. But that can only be pushed so far. She says repeatedly through the show, "I know myself," and you get the sense that beyond anything else in her life, her fierce belief in her self-made identity is really the single thing of the utmost importance. She has incredibly vicious, bitterly cold moments, and she appears (and likely is) unbreakable, but she never loses that barest hint of fragility. She's extraordinary now as she was before. The real achievement of the transfer from Off-Broadway to Broadway is that the rest of the show has risen towards her level. She is still, to my eye, the best thing about this play, and she still burns brightest, but to the credit of all others involved, she no longer threatens to completely unbalance the entire evening.