Production Details
By: Jon Robin Baitz
Director: Geoff Gruson
Genre: Drama
Running: Jan. 11 – 28, 2017
Matinee: Jan. 15 & 22
Synopsis
The play’s events occur around the Christmas 2004 holiday, at the home of Polly and Lyman Wyeth in Palm Springs, California, where they are joined by their easy-going son Trip and Polly’s sister Silda straight out of rehab. Polly and Lyman (a Reagan-like former movie star) are Republicans, while Silda (who with Polly co-wrote a series of MGM comedies in the 60s) is a liberal. Their daughter Brooke Wyeth returns home after an absence of six years, announcing to her family that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family’s history involving her late brother Henry who had been involved with the radical underground subculture in the 1970s. It is a wound the parents are passionately opposed to reopening.
“Under director Geoff Gruson, the well-chosen cast bring credibility to the ugly conflicts that splinter their characters even as a strong sense of family and abiding love for each other unite them.” – Patrick Langston. Read more…
“This is serious, rewarding theatre.” – Jamie Portman. Read more…
This show has mature language and some graphic imagery.
Talk Back: The Eve of Destruction – A Stage-side Discussion on US Socio-politics
Thursday, January 26
If you are watching the political events unfolding south of us with some bewilderment, the Ottawa Little Theatre’s current production of Other Desert Cities may be just what you are looking for to explore the great political divide in the context of one family. The show drops you into the midst of a family drama where the inter-generational political ideologies play out with some very high stakes. Actor Bob Hicks, plays Lyman Wyeth – a Reagan-era, “old-guard Republican in Hollywood” standing up for the Republican traditions, against his left-leaning offspring. Bob hails from America, and is going to join us for a Talk Back on Thursday January 26th to chat about the socio-political movements so central to the plot of this play in real-life America. Please join us for what promises to be an insightful discussion.
Cast (in order of appearance):
Brooke Wyeth ……………………………………….. Venetia Lawless
Polly Wyeth ………………………………………………….. Jane Morris
Lyman Wyeth ……………………………………………… Robert Hicks
Trip Wyeth ……………………………………………. Phillip Merriman
Silda Grauman ………………………………………….. Cheryl Jackson