{"id":12099,"date":"2014-06-09T16:32:37","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T23:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=12099"},"modified":"2014-06-09T16:34:22","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T23:34:22","slug":"stunning-funny-drama-other-desert-cities-skewers-hypocrites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/stunning-funny-drama-other-desert-cities-skewers-hypocrites\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning, funny drama in Ross Valley \u2014 ‘Other Desert Cities’ \u2014 skewers hypocrites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woody’s [rating:5]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Brooke (Jennifer Gregory, left) is stunned by revelations from her parents, Lyman (Dick Martin) and Polly (Ellen Brooks) in \u201cOther Desert Cities.\u201d Photo: Robin Jackson.<\/p>\n

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Kristine Ann Lowry plays the flamboyant, messed up Silda Grauman in \u201cOther Desert Cities.\u201d Photo: Robin Jackson.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

It felt like a heavyweight champ had whacked me in the solar plexus.<\/p>\n

Without gloves.<\/p>\n

As intended by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, the startling, climactic secret revealed in \u201cOther Desert Cities\u201d inverted my view of two main characters \u2014 plus another who never appears onstage.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more than one secret in motion at any given time in this complex Ross Valley Players\u2019 production.<\/p>\n

Raw nerves, raw feelings and hypocrites are exposed.<\/p>\n

Christmas Eve, 2004.<\/p>\n

Brooke (portrayed nimbly, from heaving anger to poignant stunned silence, by Jennifer Gregory) comes home shortly before publication of her tell-all memoir that skewers her parents.<\/p>\n

Those elders (Polly, depicted in chameleon-like, regal and repugnant glory by Ellen Brooks, and Lyman, ex-movie star and ex-ambassador underplayed expertly by Dick Martin) are ex-members of the Reagan inner circle who live in yesteryear, hiding out in their staid Palm Springs home in the desert.<\/p>\n

Also in attendance during an uncomfortable reunion are Polly\u2019s liberal sister, Silda Grauman (with Kristine Ann Lowry excelling at being manic, bitchy and loving as a woman just out of alcohol rehab who harbors a giant secret of her own), and Brooke\u2019s other brother, Trip (Peter Warden being exquisitely inelegant as the producer of a lowbrow Maury Povich-like reality TV show).<\/p>\n

All five are believable.<\/p>\n

Never theatrical cardboard figures, always fleshed out beings that could be part of your own family.<\/p>\n

Or down-the-street neighbors.<\/p>\n

Up close and personal, director Phoebe Moyer is an intelligent, articulate, warm human being. And she\u2019s managed to apply all those traits to her stage-work, ensuring that the five-member cast forcefully drives the 140-minute drama while balancing laugh-aloud comedy with family torment.<\/p>\n

Her playbill notes indicate she wanted to showcase Baitz\u2019s desire to \u201cfind the humor and the humanity within the conflict and pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

She succeeded.<\/p>\n

Despite having to rein in the prodigal daughter character who, post-hospitalization, is still fighting depression over a broken marriage and internal anguish about Henry, her suicidal anti-war brother\/best friend.<\/p>\n

Moyer\u2019s proficient direction let me buy Brooke drawing a line in the desert sand and daring the others to cross it.<\/p>\n

And it let Brooke, who consistently refers to her estranged parents by their first names rather than mom or dad, ignore the fact that she\u2019s triggering a thermonuclear time bomb by airing family secrets that could blow the holiday off the Wyeth calendar and destroy her nuclear family.<\/p>\n

The playwright, meanwhile, allows Polly to counter-attack Brooke, accusing her of having \u201clots of secrets in her dollhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also sneaks in thematic tip-offs with lines such as, \u201cMost people go through their lives pretending.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baitz, creator of television\u2019s \u201cBrothers & Sisters,\u201d also introduces the idea that acting and reality \u201care hardly mutually exclusive in this family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering all the purposeful camouflage in \u201cOther Desert Cities,\u201d I presumed the title had multiple interpretations, not the least of which was a reference to locales and manifold deaths and the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.<\/p>\n

But it concretely refers to a sign on eastbound Interstate 10 that indicates the freeway is heading toward \u201cother Desert Cities\u201d \u2014 the rest of the Coachella Valley.<\/p>\n

In the play, which debuted off-Broadway and then became a Pulitzer Prize-nominated show on the Great White Way in 2011, the environment almost becomes a character. The appropriately genteel set by Ronald Krempetz, in fact, is lighted as brightly as any I\u2019ve ever seen \u2014 a not-so-subtle hint of the desert sun?<\/p>\n

And everything\u2019s precisely in place, including lined up photos of Barry Goldwater, Frank Sinatra and, of course, the Wyeth buddies, Nancy and Ronnie Reagan.<\/p>\n

Only the costumes by Michael A. Berg expose the differences in the people we\u2019re looking at: the elders don fashionable dress-up garb, their adult kids sport insouciant dress-downs.<\/p>\n

Although some skeptics might find the play\u2019s O\u2019Henry-like denouement inconsistent with its build-up, I see it as totally in keeping with what\u2019s gone before.<\/p>\n

As for that blow to my solar plexus, I forgot to mention \u201cOther Desert Cities\u201d also left indelible marks on my heart and brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther Desert Cities\u201d will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through June 15. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $13-$26. Informtion: www.rossvalleyplayers.com<\/a> or (415) 456-9555.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woody’s [rating:5]\u00a0 It felt like a heavyweight champ had whacked me in the solar plexus. Without gloves. As intended by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, the startling, climactic secret revealed in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-woody-weingarten"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"