A Christmas tree glows in the corner of a Palm Springs living room, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus sits on the sofa in red. The first production photos of the Broadway revival of Other Desert Cities are out, ahead of its Sunday, October 18 opening night at the Hudson Theatre.
The pictures, by Emilio Madrid, put all five principals on Scott Pask’s set: a desert-modern house of pale brick, cactus and patterned screens, with palm trees dark against the sky in the high windows.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus makes her Broadway debut as Polly Wyeth, opposite Ed Harris as her husband, Lyman. Allison Janney plays Polly’s sister, Silda Grauman. Lily Rabe is their daughter, Brooke, and Joe Keery, another Broadway newcomer, is her brother, Trip.
The frames move around the family. Janney and Louis-Dreyfus trade smiles from opposite ends of the sofa. Harris and Rabe hold on to each other in a long embrace. Keery sprawls on the rug with loose pages scattered beside him while Rabe crouches to meet his eye. Louis-Dreyfus, dressed for tennis, throws her arms around Rabe. In another shot she stands in sunglasses, a tote bag on her arm, as Keery lounges on the couch.
Those pages matter. Jon Robin Baitz’s play unfolds on Christmas Eve, when Brooke comes home to her politically connected parents with the manuscript of a memoir that drags a buried family tragedy into the open. The question is who gets to tell the story, and what telling it will cost.
The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011, moved to Broadway that November, and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This staging, directed by John Benjamin Hickey, is its first Broadway revival.
Costumes are by Tom Broecker, lighting by Natasha Katz, sound and original music by Mikaal Sulaiman, and hair and wigs by Robert Pickens. Japhet Balaban, Tony Carlin, Amanda Drinkall and Kathryn Meisle are the understudies.
Previews began on Tuesday, September 29. The limited engagement runs through Sunday, January 17, 2027, at the Hudson Theatre, 141 West 44th Street. The evening performance on Sunday, January 3, is a benefit for the Entertainment Community Fund, and $49 digital lottery and rush tickets are available for the run.
