#1
Posted: 11/3/11 at 1:14am
Today is Thursday, November 3, marking the official opening performance of Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities -- the acclaimed drama about a wealthy Republican family dogged by its past -- at the Booth Theatre.
The play is coming-off the heels of a sold-out run Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater last winter under the direction of Joe Mantello, who returns for the Broadway production. Preview performances began October 12.
The Broadway engagement, which marks Baitz's Broadway playwrighting debut, reunites major players from the Off-Broadway world premiere as well as a handful of new faces.
The company includes Stockard Channing as family matriarch Polly Wyeth, Stacy Keach as her husband Lyman, Thomas Sadoski as their son Trip, the trifecta returning from the previous run. New to the Broadway production are Judith Light, in the role of acidic alcoholic aunt Silda Grauman, and Rachel Griffiths as daughter Brooke Wyeth.
For those curious, or who didn't see the previous mounting, Linda Lavin and Elizabeth Marvel originated the roles Off-Broadway, respectively.
Here's how LCT bills the play: "In Other Desert Cities Brooke Wyeth (Griffiths), a once promising novelist, returns home after a six year absence to celebrate Christmas in Palm Springs with her parents, former members of the Reagan inner-circle (Channing and Keach), her brother (Sadoski) and her aunt (Light). When Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir focusing on an explosive chapter in the family’s history, the holiday reunion is thrown into turmoil and the Wyeths are both bound together and torn apart as they struggle to come to terms with their past."
The play is coming-off the heels of a sold-out run Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater last winter under the direction of Joe Mantello, who returns for the Broadway production. Preview performances began October 12.
The Broadway engagement, which marks Baitz's Broadway playwrighting debut, reunites major players from the Off-Broadway world premiere as well as a handful of new faces.
The company includes Stockard Channing as family matriarch Polly Wyeth, Stacy Keach as her husband Lyman, Thomas Sadoski as their son Trip, the trifecta returning from the previous run. New to the Broadway production are Judith Light, in the role of acidic alcoholic aunt Silda Grauman, and Rachel Griffiths as daughter Brooke Wyeth.
For those curious, or who didn't see the previous mounting, Linda Lavin and Elizabeth Marvel originated the roles Off-Broadway, respectively.
Here's how LCT bills the play: "In Other Desert Cities Brooke Wyeth (Griffiths), a once promising novelist, returns home after a six year absence to celebrate Christmas in Palm Springs with her parents, former members of the Reagan inner-circle (Channing and Keach), her brother (Sadoski) and her aunt (Light). When Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir focusing on an explosive chapter in the family’s history, the holiday reunion is thrown into turmoil and the Wyeths are both bound together and torn apart as they struggle to come to terms with their past."
