They're like a second-tier Ron and Nancy, living off the fumes of patrician GOP customs as they desiccate in Palm Springs. And like the Reagans, in whose social circle they once bloomed, Polly and Lyman Wyeth have children who have not distinguished themselves according to script. Their sybaritic youngest son produces cheesy reality TV while their daughter is divorced, depressed, and living as much as a bohemian as one can in Sag Harbor. And then there is Henry, the oldest offspring, but we don't talk about Henry.
In Jon Robin Baitz's 2011 play Other Desert Cities, now at New Conservatory Theatre Center in an attractive production, it's Christmastime, when you can count on various hurts, grudges, and disappointments to be opened along with the presents. But amongst the gifts that the children come bearing is a time bomb in the form of a manuscript. After six years of writer's block and crippling depression, daughter Brooke has finally written a second novel that she wants the family to read before it is published.
Her mother is so happy, in a passive-aggressive way. "You'll no longer be known as the girl who only had one book in her," says Polly Wyeth as tennis, shopping, cocktails, and judgments fill out the family's Christmas Eve. Epigrammatic digs, many quite funny in a conversationally unlikely way, are tossed about, and the characters occasionally expound on subjects both personal and political. It is 2004, but the still-new Iraq war isn't much of an issue. Colin Powell has endorsed it, and as Polly says, "Colin Powell is the most trusted man in America."
But the jagged bonhomie comes to a screeching halt when Brooke reveals that her manuscript is not a novel but rather a memoir about her family. That she writes that her parents are "WASP-ified GOP zombies" is small insult compared to the book's excoriation of how they treated her brother Henry, the sibling whose name is rarely mentioned, and who was implicated in a Weathermen-style bombing of an Army recruitment center several decades before. Their frigid parenting style drove him to radicalism, she writes, and their reaction after he sought help at home would then drive him to suicide.
The play is at its most intriguing amid the intra-family debates about whether Brooke should let her book be published. Her brother is generally supportive for proceeding, though he tells her, "You have to accept the consequences of art over life," knowing that their parents will be publically crushed a second time. Brooke also has the support of Polly's acerbically wise alcoholic sister, who is camping out with the Wyeths after a stint in rehab. As for Polly and Lyman, they realize the best they can hope for is that Brooke will wait until they're dead before going public. But the issues of the hurt that an artist can cause, even in the quest for truthfulness, are largely swept away in a last-minute reveal both emotionally wrought and a bit of a convenient contrivance.
Director Arturo Catricala's production comfortably follows the flows of Baitz's script, and is right at home on Kuo-Hao Lo's set of mid-century chic conformity. Keri Fitch's costumes capture the characters' spirits, as do the performers with only occasional variances of skillfulness.
Michaela Greeley is wonderful as mother Polly as she shoots off zingers while frantically clutching at the refuge of appearances. Geoffrey Colton plays husband Lyman with a temperance befitting a former ambassador but missing perhaps some of the flair of the movie star that preceded statesmanship. As daughter Brooke, Melissa Keith exemplifies conflicted fragility in what becomes the centerpiece role. Cheryl Smith crisply captures the sardonic Silda, Polly's currently between-drinks sister, and Paul Collins is a welcome presence as youngest son Trip, who comes closest to family peacemaker.
In a program note, NCTC Artistic Director Ed Decker unapologetically addresses the eyebrows raised by his inclusion of a non-gay-themed play in the LGBT theater's season, albeit one written by a gay playwright. Where my eyebrow became raised is that the Wyeths make no acknowledgment that they are living (even in 2004) in one of the gayest cities in the world. Polly and Lyman may embrace denial, but even a few disparaging remarks about the queer townsfolk would offer welcome verisimilitude.
Other Desert Cities will run through April 5 at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Tickets are $25-$45. Call (415) 861-8972 or go to nctcsf.org.