NEW YORK — There’s a casual cockiness to the way “Other Desert Cities” raises the curtain and promptly unveils a slew of megawatt stars.
Behold, here on the Hudson Theatre stage, the 11-time Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus in all her quipping glory. Four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris. “Stranger Things” heartthrob Joe Keery. Revered character actress Lily Rabe. When Allison Janney meanders onstage a half-hour into the play — naturally prompting applause for a performer boasting eight Emmys and an Oscar — you realize that any more entrances would’ve morphed the first act into an avalanche of ovations.
Not that this indelible cast is coasting on its credentials. The first Broadway revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s 2011 family drama is a searing account of suppressed traumas, diverging truths and political fractures. Even if “Other Desert Cites” doesn’t mine revelatory work from its big-name ensemble, director John Benjamin Hickey expertly deploys an imposing arsenal that — for the most part — is firing on all cylinders.
Take Louis-Dreyfus and her portrayal of Polly Wyeth, the matriarch of a blue-blooded Reaganite family celebrating Christmas Eve 2004 in Palm Springs, California. When Polly bemoans that her water could use some vodka, the laugh line fits Louis-Dreyfus like a Selina Meyer-sized glove. As Polly needles her daughter, Brooke — a liberal Long Island novelist, played by Rabe, whose upcoming memoir promises to surface painful family secrets — the barbs start to draw blood.
Janney also compiles plenty of cackles as Polly’s newly sober sister, Silda. Harris plays Lyman, Polly’s onetime movie star husband, as a levelheaded peacemaker who still finds himself spiraling. Keery imbues the couple’s son, Trip, with surface-level guile and deep-seated guilt.
Only Rabe, as the black sheep Brooke, struggles to grasp her careening character. It’s the toughest assignment: Brooke, a 40-something working through a divorce and a mental health crisis, is the embodiment of “main character syndrome” — a flawed figure who sees her subjective experience as the absolute truth. Still, Rabe could stand to tighten up Brooke’s unhinged righteousness.
Although Baitz sets the action against the backdrop of the Iraq War — references to Colin Powell and Donald H. Rumsfeld swiftly orient the audience — the central melodrama feels irresistibly timeless. If the first act carefully puts the logs in place, like Harris’s Lyman prepping his fireplace, the second dutifully sets them ablaze. And who could look away from such entrancing flames?
Through Jan. 17 at the Hudson Theatre in New York. About 2 hours 30 minutes. otherdesertcitiesbroadway.com.
Here are reviews of four more productions that recently opened on New York stages:
‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’
Jethro Compton and Darren Clark’s enchanting adaptation of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is unabashedly askew. Case in point: The set for this musical spin on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story, about an aging-in-reverse everyman, is the sloped deck of a fishing boat.
The opening number, “The Western Wind,” further dials up the whimsy while rapidly introducing the denizens of a quaint Cornish village. A theatergoer could be forgiven, frankly, for struggling to get their bearings. But then the hurtling tune pumps its brakes.
As the actor-musicians relaying the tale arrive at the moment of Benjamin’s birth, on a fateful night in December 1918, the vivid lyrics depict a town whose water suddenly, inexplicably reverses course. “The slumberin’ sheep awoke from a dream/ To find the water on the farm had started flowin’ upstream,” the cast chants, hypnotically swaying in the moonlight. “And on that fateful night, by the full moon’s force/ The laws of time and tide for a time changed course.”
It’s at this point, moments before Andrew Durand takes the stage as our unassuming hero — born an old man in a three-piece suit — that “Benjamin Button” casts its spell. The enchantment never breaks. Now off-Broadway at the Public Theater, after its London run nabbed the 2025 Olivier Award for best musical, the Compton-directed spectacle is a modern classic in the making.
Compton and Clark weave a folksy Celtic score, packed with thigh-slapping drinking songs, ethereal ballads and soaring earworms. (The life-affirming anthem “A Little Life” and the rousing Act 1 finale “Shippin’ Out Tomorrow” are particularly bewitching.) Through it all, each member of the 11-person cast plays an instrument — or two or three or four — while toggling between characters, belting lyrics and executing Chi-San Howard’s enthralling choreography.
It’s a staggering showcase for each performer, though Kelsee Kimmel does break out of the ensemble to portray Elowen Keene, the spunky barmaid who catches Benjamin’s eye. It’s this star-crossed romance that steers “Benjamin Button” toward profound musings on the allure of an ordinary life — even under extraordinary circumstances — and embracing the time we have in all its bittersweet beauty.
All the while, our narrators dutifully rattle off the precise times and dates and distances that dictate Benjamin’s idiosyncratic existence. What does it all add up to? One of the decade’s most breathtaking musicals.
Through Dec. 6 at the Public Theater. About 2 hours 30 minutes. publictheater.org.
‘860’
If solo shows give you pause, Billy Crystal has just the remedy: a sidesplitting, heartrending trip down memory lane in which the 78-year-old funnyman expands the cast by summoning impressions of Muhammad Ali, Martin Scorsese and (stay with me) Robin Williams as Ronald Reagan.
Directed by Scott Ellis, “860” is ostensibly focused on the Crystal family home (featuring the titular street address) that burned down during the Palisades Fire last year in Los Angeles. And Crystal doesn’t shy from the still-searing pain that comes with watching the host of so many memories and keepsakes and taken-for-granted comforts go up in flames. That set designer Scott Pask has meticulously re-created Crystal’s home office — from the Emmys and clapperboards to the Mike Wazowski figurine and Yankee Stadium seat— only underscores the loss.
Yet Crystal promptly rewinds the tape and spends most of this Broadway show skipping around the highlights of an enduring career: hosting the Oscars, shooting “When Harry Met Sally…,” befriending Ali. Along the way, Crystal proves he can still unfurl a sly rib tickler with the best of them. Unwieldy as the structure may be, who would turn down the chance to witness an iconic entertainer play the hits? This show, it turns out, is less focused on clearing hurdles and more about enjoying a well-earned victory lap.
Through Jan. 3 at the Imperial Theatre. About 1 hour 40 minutes. billycrystal860.com.
‘School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play’
It would’ve been a shame if Denée Benton and Jasmine Amy Rogers had shared the Broadway stage and never flashed their transcendent pipes. Well, don’t fret: “School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play” may not be a musical, but director Whitney White still unleashes the duo for a performance of Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” that morphs into a riotous act of one-upmanship.
Beyond that sky-high point, Jocelyn Bioh’s 2017 comedy still crackles. The excellent Benton plays Paulina — the Regina George-esque queen bee at a girls’ high school in 1986 Ghana — with snide stares, biting put-downs and internalized torment. Rogers makes for a wickedly shrewd Ericka, a new student from Ohio and our Cady Heron stand-in. And a Miss Ghana pageant (Tony winner Patina Miller pops up as the contest’s recruiter) sets the stage for an incisive rumination on the stain of colorism and commercialized beauty standards.
It’s all so engrossing that when “School Girls” dismisses class after a mere 80 minutes — with a final showdown between Paulina and Ericka oddly, conspicuously absent — the brisk runtime is a minor disappointment. But that quibble certainly doesn’t deny the endeavor a passing grade.
Through Nov. 15 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. About 1 hour 20 minutes. manhattantheatreclub.com.
‘The Imaginary Invalid’
If Bill Irwin is going to adapt Molière’s 17th-century comédie-ballet “The Imaginary Invalid” and portray the titular hypochondriac, one can only hope he’s going to do it in decidedly Irwinian fashion. That is: with a healthy helping of vaudevillian verve and humanist insight.
That he does. Directed by Brandon J. Dirden, the farce gives Irwin ample opportunities to contort and flail and gesticulate as his Argan stirs up a scheme to marry off his daughter (Ava Lalezarzadeh) to a budding doctor (a scene-stealing Hiram Delgado). The play also features a charming Broadway debut from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s” Rachel Bloom, who understands her fourth-wall-breaking assignment as Argan’s delightfully insubordinate maid.
The shenanigans ultimately prove slight but undeniably diverting. Sometimes, that’s just what the doctor ordered.
Through Nov. 22 at the Todd Haimes Theatre. About 1 hour 30 minutes. roundabouttheatre.org.
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