Other Desert Cities
a Drama by Jon Robin Baitz
Presented by Whitby Courthouse Theatre
November 09 - 26, 2022 at Whitby Courthouse Theatre |
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| "Other Desert Cities" involves a family with differing political views and a long-held family secret. The play's name refers to a control city guide sign on eastbound Interstate 10 in California, which indicates that the freeway is headed towards Indio, California and "other Desert Cities" (that is, the rest of the Coachella Valley).
The play's events occur around the Christmas 2004 holiday, when the family of Polly and Lyman Wyeth gather in Palm Springs, California. Their daughter Brooke Wyeth returns home after six years. Polly's sister Silda is also visiting, out of a time spent in rehab. Polly and Lyman are Republicans, while Silda is a liberal. The sisters co-wrote a series of MGM comedies in the 1960s.
Brooke announces to her family 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. That event is the suicide of her late brother Henry, who had been involved with the radical underground subculture. |
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