Other Desert Cities

Dysfunctional families are always the best entertainment

Screenwriter and playwright Jon Robin Raitz had developed a surefire formula for producing fantastic drama. First create a cast of characters, bonded by blood or by friendship and then introduce some kind of exterior pressure which forces all of these character's secrets and petty grievances out through the cracks. He's already used this formula to great effect on the television show Brothers and Sisters and is currently adapting a new version of The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which details the drastic changes which take place among a group of friends after they all witness a child being slapped at a party.

Baitz's Other Desert Cities premiered on Broadway in 2011 with Stockard Channing among the cast and was showered with critical acclaim and five Tony nominations. It transferred to the Old Vic in 2014, and was the first production of the theatre's In the Round season. Martha Plimpton and Joan Cusack were among the cast singled out for their fantastic performances.

What is Other Desert Cities About?

It's Christmas 2004 and the Wyeths are awaiting the arrival of their two children Trip and Brooke back home for the holidays. While Polly and Lyman's staunch republican views have always been at odds with their daughter's more liberal outlook, they could not prepare themselves for the revelation that their daughter has in store. To her parent's horror, Brooke announces that she intends to publish a tell-all memoir about her dysfunctional family and in particular the suicide of her elder brother - for which she lays the lions share of the blame at the feet of mummy and daddy.