OTHER DESERT CITIES Reviews — Page 2

Saw the matinee today, Lauren was on, and she was also ON. The play was very well written and very heart-wrenching. Many tears shed today.

Truly great performances by the cast and a very touching piece of theatre.

Also, the mezzanine was maybe 1/4 full, we were last row, on the aisle house left and moved up to the front rows of the mezzanine and then orchestra.

I decided to see the matinee yesterday. Thanks to Channing's absence, there were plenty of good cancellations to be had, and I ended up third row center.

Klein was very good overall, and the ensemble didn't seem any less cohesive in Channing's absence. They all performed together very well. I thought Keach and Light were especially "on" yesterday. Griffiths continues to astound me, and Sadoski is just so solid.

If I had one complaint about Klein's performance--and I do--it was that she didn't appear to have that many layers. She started out angry and stayed there. I missed Channing's emotional build and break. Maybe it had something to do with the severe southern accent she affected, which didn't seem right for someone who's been living in California and Washington for 50 years. (It also didn't make sense, considering Silda's line that she and Polly were "Jewish girls who lost their accent along the way)

Also--yesterday's audience was AWFUL. Lots of bitching about Stockard being out, not so sotto voce whispering, and five cell phones by my count--including a very prolonged one at a climactic moment.

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Updated On: 11/24/11 at 09:14 AM

That one happened right across the aisle from where I was sitting. It was really bad, and wasn't helped by the fact that the people next to them were *loudly* cursing them out as the guilty party tried to locate their phone. I loved how Light waited until the phone stopped before delivering her line. Griffiths looked pissed--she stared very angrily in the direction of the phone.

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"Wildly overrated, and of course Brantley would rave again. They should have sent Isherwood, who might have had a more measured response. The cast is more interesting, true, but the play is so superficial, and so clearly based on "A Delicate Balance " (and not very well) that Edward Albee should be given a credit. A play that gracefully and emptily soothes its audience, without ever provoking an honest emotion."

II finally saw the play last night, Jay, and while I disagree with you strongly about its merits, I thought very much about its relationship to "A Delicate Balance." Because the stories have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, one is not based on the other. But the commonalities are unmissable. ODC is an homage (the way Obsession was an homage to Vertigo - and yet, quite differently, as the stylistic and narrative differential is far greater between the two plays than it is between the two movies). Not an an adaptation. Tobias's and Lyman's equanimity, Claire's and Silda's alcoholism (one inveterate, the other authentically at bay)*, insolvency, dysfunctionality and tart wits, and the brother/sister in-law conviviality and upper crust ennui and philosophizing are in full force. And Brooke and Julie are both divorced (or separated), returned home, adore their aunts, have good relationships with their fathers (one more than the other), and are huge challenges to their moms. But Tobias and Agnes have a very different relationship than Lyman and Polly, and Agnes and Polly, the central characters, are two extremely different women. In each parents responsibilities for children, their own and the proxy sibling child, are dealt with. The love between Polly and Silda, as Tripp notably states and the audience can clearly appreciate, is palpable; whereas in ADB, there are few outward signs of sisterly affection But there are three children in ODC, and, a significant issue of contention for the marriage, only one in ADB. Humor, including arch sarcasm, along with some very brutal and jarring expressions of primal hatred (on the surface?), propel both plays.

The plays are completely different in style, plot, and genre. ADB deals with a crisis brought on by Harry and Edna's absurdist arrival at the family's house - and, among many other questions, some difficult to ascertain at first glance, asks the question what defines the parameters of family. ODC is a realistic play about American society and politics, as Brantley aptly noted, in the style of Lillian Hellman.

* or rather in one case the drinking the inveterate and the other at bay; the alcoholism in both case, of course, is a constant

Updated On: 2/25/12 at 02:46 PM