OnStage - Goodman Theatre

not permit me to do: to write about the
family as a narrative, and a certain kind
of privileged America which is acknowledged
in the play.
HW: I’m curious to hear you talk about
the members of the family but also the
central impasse in which we find the
family when the play begins.
JRB: Lyman is a kind of lionesque
benign patriarch who appears to be
profoundly affable—a peacemaker,
a diplomat, slightly opaque, slightly
befuddled. But that may very well be
a defense mechanism, a mask even;
he’s a very practiced actor. Like many
fathers he loves his children in ways
that sometimes shock even him. He
especially worries about his oldest
daughter, Brooke, who’s exiled herself
from the West much like I did; moved
out to Sag Harbor much as I did; has
written professionally, been a novelist,
and has dried up, much as I occasionally
have; has suffered from serious
Synopsis
Other Desert Cities transports us to Christmas Eve, 2004, in the Palm Springs mansion
of Lyman and Polly Wyeth, two old-guard Hollywood Republicans. For the holiday
they’re hosting their son, Trip, a laid-back Hollywood producer; their daughter,
Brooke, a middle aged liberal writer with a history of depression; and Polly’s sister,
Silda, a liberal former screenwriter recently released from rehab. When Brooke
arrives she announces that she has brought the manuscript of her soon-to-be-published
memoir—a book that portrays her parents in an unflattering light and threatens
to expose a long-buried family secret. When the family members discover the
book’s contents a full-on battle between Brooke and her parents erupts, as deepseated
issues are dredged to the surface and the characters are forced to grapple
with the consequences of the choices they made in the distant past.
clinical depression much as I have;
and is burdened by the memory of her
older brother’s suicide when they were
teenagers. And this has caused her a
lifetime’s worth of agony and a sense of
loss and betrayal. Her ability to function
over the years has dwindled and she’s
been hospitalized. When we meet her,
she’s regained buoyancy and has just
completed a new book that the family
thinks is a novel, but of course is actually
a memoir. She’s come to announce
this book and ask for her parents’
approval before it’s published.
This brings us to Polly, the matriarch of
the family. There are ways in which she
mirrors Nancy Reagan, the Annenbergs
and the old California conservatives.
She’s modeled her life with a kind of rigorous
combination of discipline and certitude.
She’s a realist, and she’s fiercely
dedicated to her family’s survival.
Trip, the surviving son, who is younger
than Brooke, has found a way to survive:
to go with the flow. His overarching
dogma consists of “let it go, it’s
California, it’s all fine.” He has become
a producer of TV game shows, he’s
steeped in pop culture and fornication,
and he’s constantly being called
upon to make peace between Polly
and Brooke. And the other character is
Polly’s troublemaking sister, Silda, also
a writer. She is as much a liberal as
Polly is a conservative, and they have a
volatile relationship but one that’s built
out of love.
LEFT: President-elect Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy
with Walter and Leonore Annenberg in Palm Springs in
November, 1980. Ron Edmonds / Copyright Bettmann/
Corbis / AP Images
3