Other Desert Cities

Austin Playhouse will bring Austin audiences Baitz' powerful family drama. In the award-winning Other Desert Cities, Baitz brings us an emotionally charged play about a family coming to terms with long-held secrets.

Brooke Wyeth (Lara Toner) returns home to Palm Springs after a six-year absence and a mental breakdown to celebrate Christmas with her parents (Babs George and Rick Roemer), her brother (Jacob Trussell), and her aunt (Bernadette Nason). Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history-a wound they don't want reopened. In effect, she draws a line in the sand and dares them all to cross it.

The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011 to critical acclaim and transferred to Broadway in November 2011, marking the Broadway debut of a Baitz play. The play was named Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. It was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Jon Robin Baitz's plays include My Beautiful Goddamn City, Ten Unknowns, The Paris Letter, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or Schmucks, A Fair Country, The Substance of Fire, and an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. His television credits include The West Wing, Alias, and Brothers and Sisters, which he created.

Other Desert Cities BWW Reader Reviews