A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Theater is all about storytelling, and stories don’t come any better crafted than Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Other Desert Cities. The SF Bay Area is enjoying two simultaneous presentations of this compelling family drama—one directed by Dana Nelson-Isaacs at Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions through May 4, and the other directed by Dylan Russell at Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond through May 18. Both theaters are compact, intimate venues, and both productions are tremendous.
This is not the first time that parallel productions have graced the Bay Area. It has happened several times, as with Kinky Boots or Halloween-season The Rocky Horror Show. This time around, the two productions are within 40 miles of each other. It’s a rare opportunity for theatergoers to compare and contrast differing interpretations of the same script—very much like enjoying a favorite song done by two different singers.
The setup: lifelong resentments, political differences, and a long-suppressed Wyeth family secret provoke eruptions on Christmas Eve in Palm Springs in 2004, during the Iraq war. After a long stint in rehab, daughter Brooke has returned briefly from the East Coast, where she has completed a memoir about growing up in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. She’s landed a publishing contract and has brought copies of the manuscript to the reunion, a treatise that her parents Polly and Lyman, and her younger brother Trip, have not read.
In both venues, Baitz’s incisive drama unfolds on an evocative set. Masquers set designer Suzanne Daniel and projections designer Michael O’Brien have joined forces to recreate the desert’s appealing open architecture and expansive landscape, seemingly stretching for miles outside the large picture windows of the upscale Wyeth home, and changing appropriately for time of day. Lucky Penny eschews projections in favor of a very effective large backdrop of the desert.
Imperious matriarch Polly Wyeth (Jen Halsing, Masquers; Cynthia Lagodzinski, Lucky Penny) lords it over her two visiting adult children—writer Brooke (Michele Morgen, Masquers; Taylor Bartolucci, Lucky Penny) and Brooke’s younger brother Trip (Tyler Aguallo, Masquers; Max Geide, Lucky Penny) an L.A. showrunner with a successful TV comedy series called A Jury of Your Peers, featuring TV and movie stars as jurors.
Patriarch Lyman Wyeth (Jim Rupp, Masquers; Barry Martin, Lucky Penny) is a retired second-tier film actor who became an ambassador and a Republican spokesman thanks to a Hollywood friendship with Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Polly and her sister Silda Grauman (Alison Lustbader, Masquers; Titian Lish, Lucky Penny) are former hot-shot screenwriters who worked together on a string of successful films about a character named “Hilary”—no reference to the former First Lady as far as we know.
Silda is a fresh-from-rehab lush camping out with her sister and brother-in-law. She emerges periodically from her Zombie state to make observations about the family dynamic—some of them hilarious—and about her enduring relationship with drugs and alcohol. The entire first act is a very much a satire on holiday reunions, with every member of the Wyeth clan launching barbs at each other—from mediocre performances on the tennis court to career shortcomings and opposing political beliefs.
It’s also a satire on the 1950s and ’60s alcohol-fueled lifestyle practiced by an older generation (cue reruns of Mad Men). The Wyeths come in from early morning tennis and pour themselves some stiff drinks before they can even decide what to do for breakfast. Polly, in fact, is rarely seen without a drink in her hand, even while berating Brooke and Trip about their generation’s “destruction of America with drugs.”
Act II takes the tale in a much more somber direction, with an in-depth exposition about the mysterious fate of Brooke’s older brother Henry, a teenage anti-war activist in the early 1970s who was implicated in a bombing of an Army recruitment center, and who then disappeared. Brooke has struggled long and hard to resolve her feelings about him, revealed in her manuscript.
That’s when all hell breaks loose in the Wyeth household, compellingly depicted by both troupes. Bartolucci presents Brooke as emotionally tender and volatile, while Morgen is more contained. Rupp’s Lyman is self-deprecating, indignant, and defensive, while Martin endows him with a strong guilty streak. Halsing wears Polly’s tennis visor like a tiara, crushing her children with nasty commentary, while Lagodinski imbues the character with simmering, hissing resentments. Aguallo and Geide similarly interpret Trip as a self-promoting entertainment biz hipster, following in his parents’ footsteps.
Other Desert Cities at Lucky Penny
The show’s comic relief and audience point-of-view character is Silda, the only one of the family who’s read Brooke’s work, and who in fact helped her with it. Silda’s asides are concise and accurate. As the drama plays out, she observes: “Telling the truth is a very expensive hobby.” It’s a rejoinder to all of them as they try to salvage the Christmas holiday.
Other Desert Cities at Lucky Penny
Ultimately, Other Desert Cities is a heart-rending redemption story, not merely for Brooke but for her brother Trip and to a lesser extent, for her parents. The play is as provocative now as it was when it debuted. It’s among the most relevant scripts to emerge in contemporary American theater. Both of these productions are superb, and both of them are highly recommended.
Other Desert Cities at Lucky Penny
Masquers Playhouse photos by Mark Decker
Lucky Penny photos by Heather and Kurt Gonsalves/KMG Design
Other Desert Cities at Lucky Penny.[Editor’s note: Another production of Other Desert Cities is also on right now at the scene of the crime in Palm Springs at CV Rep. Here’s our review.]
Other Desert Cities
Lucky Penny Productions
1758 Industrial Way in Napa
ends on May 4, 2025
for tickets ($30-$40), call 707.266.6305 or visit Lucky Penny
Other Desert Cities
Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place in Point Richmond
Thurs at 8 (Nov 21); Fri and Sat at 8; Sun at 2
ends on May 18, 2025
for tickets ($15-$35), call 510.232.4031 or visit Masquers
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: [email protected]
