Shortly after the Broadway premiere of Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities” in 2011, I interviewed one of its stars about playing the doyenne of a famous, albeit fictitious, Republican family living in Palm Springs. Stockard Channing told me that her character, Polly Wyeth, carried a two-ton weight on her shoulders from the moment she stepped on stage.
In other words, Polly and her actor-turned-ambassador husband Lyman (then played by Stacey Keach) harbored a very big secret that they had disclosed to no one else, not even their “two children.” One of those children has to remind Polly, early in “Other Desert Cities,” that she actually has three children, not just two. The secret regarding that third child is Polly and Lyman’s two-ton weight.
The first Broadway revival of Baitz’s great play opened Sunday at the Hudson Theatre, and in her Broadway debut, Julia Louis-Dreyfus does not bring the weight of that secret to her performance. Where Channing’s Polly possessed gravitas, Louis-Dreyfus’ Polly emerges as brittle to the touch. Her performance reminded me of something Edith Wharton wrote in “The Age of Innocence” about her character May Welland (Winona Ryder in the 1993 film): “The world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever noticing. This hard, bright blindness … ”
The difference between May and Polly, of course, is that what happens to Baitz’s character takes place in middle age when her oldest child, a political radical, bombs an army recruitment center during the Iraq War.
It speaks to the power of Baitz’s play that the core tragedy works brilliantly with two such different interpretations of Polly Wyeth. With Louis-Dreyfus, “Other Desert Cities” is now much more a comedy in its first act than it was with Channing. After years on “Veep” and “Seinfeld,” this actor knows just what to do with Baitz’s many zingers, which this Polly needs to ward off any and all enemies, a few of which are in her immediate family. Louis-Dreyfus’ Polly has turned herself into a china doll and needs to distance herself emotionally from daughter Brooke (Lily Rabe), son Trip (Joe Keery) and recovering alcoholic-addict sister Silda (Allison Janney).
Because he knows The Secret, husband Lyman (Ed Harris) is the one person with whom Polly never plays target practice.
While Louis-Dreyfus regales the audience at the Hudson Theatre, Harris gives a most self-effacing performance. Except for a wonderful cameo where he delivers his signature death scene, one he honed decades ago in countless movie Westerns, Harris’ Lyman Wyeth is the husband who’s missing in action. We don’t exactly miss him, either. Besides Louis-Dreyfus, there is Janney’s boisterous and wise-cracking Silda, who resembles Edward Albee’s Claire in “A Delicate Balance,” a role Elaine Stritch played to perfection in that play’s last Broadway revival. Here, Janney keeps that Ladies Who Lunch torch burning brightly.
What quickly turns into a major crisis for Polly and Lyman is Brooke’s new and as-yet unpublished memoir about that third Wyeth kid that neither parent ever mentions.
A wet-blanket of a daughter, Brooke makes every effort to look older and dumpier than her mother. While Brooke’s tennis outfit features boxer shorts that almost cover her knees, Polly wears a skirt that barely covers her rear (costumes by Tom Broecker). By nature, political conservatives like Polly have more fun. On the other hand, Brooke, as played by Rabe, enjoys nothing more than marinating in her own moral superiority.
Then there’s brother Trip. If there’s a flaw with “Other Desert Cities,” it’s that the character is too clearly a mouthpiece for the playwright. Trip can’t help himself; he keeps delivering long speeches designed to make the audience break out in applause. Keery, an immensely charismatic actor, does nothing to squelch that unfortunate cheerleader impulse in us theatergoers.
Director John Benjamin Hickey is more judicious in his direction of this production’s other male actor. There’s a big second-act payoff in Harris’ practically receding into set designer Scott Pask’s Palm Springs living room in Act 1. Gravitas escapes Louis-Dreyfus but not Harris, who singlehandedly carries that moral two-ton weight in the play’s heartbreaking final moments.
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