At its core, Other Desert Cities is a showcase for actors, so it doesn’t surprise me that it would be catnip for a big-name revival. I saw the original three times (once at the Newhouse, twice on Broadway), and I remember thinking that, even with Mantello’s talent as a director, the production felt like you were watching five siloed star performances rather than something cohesive. This isn’t to say it wasn’t thrilling — but it was a case of the whole not quite adding up to the sum of its parts. I’d be curious to see what a new directorial vision would do for the play. Assuming it won’t be updated, too, I wonder how the political angle will work in a world that’s moved far beyond the early 2000s milieu of the script.
Harris seems an excellent choice for Lyman. Louis-Dreyfuss and Janney both strike me as Silda types.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
