It's Christmas in Palm Springs. After a six-year absence, Brooke Wyeth comes to celebrate the festive season with her old guard Republican parents, her apolitical TV exec brother and her liberal screenwriter alcoholic aunt. But the warm desert air turns chilly when news of Brooke's upcoming memoir to revive a shameful and embarrassing chapter in the family's history is revealed. The battle between truth and loyalty, family and social responsibility resonates with personal and political agendas. In this family, secrets are currency; and everyone is rich.
Jon Robin Baitz's knock-out domestic dust-up is a masterly combination of shadow and shimmer. Nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Play, it was also a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Striking a delicate balance between comedy and "thermonuclear family war", Other Desert Cities is a richly satisfying night of theatre, full of crackling humour, intelligence, rich emotion and, yes, even deep family love. Transfixing!
Sarah Peirse, Hera Dunleavy and Elizabeth Hawthorne head a stellar cast in this Broadway winner from the creator of TV's Brothers and Sisters. Full of intellectual rigour and incisive humour, this is contemporary American playwriting at its most satisfying.
