On Christmas Eve 2004, the Wyeth home in Palm Springs, one of the “Other Desert Cities” referred to on a California road sign leading to Ino, is the scene of a family reunion. It isn’t pleasant, not just because the family is dysfunctional, but also because the member who ignited the sparks that fly can’t be there.
The great window of the great room -- gorgeous modern -- looks out at majestic mountains leading from green landscape that gets dryer as it nears the house. Inside, there’s an icier Christmas tree with blue bulbs and lights that will glow later. No need to light the fireplace; Lyman Wyeth is happy to be away from blazing heat outside.
Lyman’s a former actor and Reagan Republican who became an ambassador and still attempts using his diplomatic skills. He and his politically rightist, glamorous, smartly dressed wife, Polly, enjoy a cocktails-at-home, then country-club-centered life. Brooke, their daughter who’s back for the first time in six years, is about to begin the revelation of secrets engulfing all. Included are younger brother Trip, a Berkeley grad who now produces a TV game show, and outspoken leftist Silda Grauman, Polly’s alcoholic sister just out of the rehab she financed.
Formerly a novelist, Brooke announces she’s written a memoir based on their family life. At its center is her older brother Henry, who’d joined a group of radical extremists protesting the Viet Nam war. He was involved in a bombing that, probably unintentionally, caused a janitor’s death. In the fire Henry disappeared. His assumed death has haunted Brooke and her book apparently blames her parents, their positions and politics, for betraying Henry, her, and their country.
The major conflict comes between Brooke and the Lymans, who want her to cancel publication of her book, especially as it is soon to be previewed in The New Yorker. She thinks she owes it to Henry, who was radicalized because he felt outcast by his parents. To her, he probably killed himself, presuming guilt for an innocent’s death. Shouldn’t the family also pay? Or at least not live in luxurious comfort?
Lucy Lavely brings out Brooke’s anguish, making her accusations understandable. She’s been depressed and is still on edge and sometimes a bit smug. In her recent history is divorce from an unlikely choice of husbands, except for her politics. Trip describes him as unloved activist, an immigrant who used her to get a green card.
At times, Brooke seems in competition with her mother, a role skillfully inhabited by beautiful Lauren Klein. Polly is outspoken, dominating, in control. She’s unashamed of having money and has not been ungenerous, though she doesn’t hide her generosity as Brooke underplays her awareness that she is rich by saying she doesn’t need money. That Polly and Lyman don’t talk about Henry gets to Brooke, who obviously wants to do it for them. Trip, who was too much younger to remember him, seems to think he’s the only one who lives in the real world of today. He feels sorry for Henry and the rest of his family but -- as his often satiric remarks indicate -- he thinks of himself as an outsider. Benjamin Williamson makes Trip very likeable in his efforts toward peace. The same is true of J. Kenneth Campbell’s Lyman, who continually tries to resolve the major conflict. Carolyn Michel as Silda, still dressed in a psychedelic shirt of the early ‘70s, supplies understanding of the unradical but committed left of Henry’s time. She remains an out-and-out socialist, ready to stoke flames in the conflict and not let them burn out before the resolution. Her struggle to remain sober is admirable, if not her lack of gratitude to her sister for the latter’s help.
Greg Leaming achieves a great balance in directing the varied personalities and the right pace at which secrets are revealed. He’s in tune with the realism of the play. He assures that everyone respects Jon Robin Baitz’s fine dialogue.
Anthony Pearson’s lighting of the different times of day and the difference between the exterior and interior deserts is just right. Matthew Parker’s sound never distracts. Costumes by Devon Painter set the status and personality of each character. Polly’s clothing seems straight out of Vogue. I do have a feeling that more than the referenced years elapsed since the kind of protest Henry was involved in and 2004. My main reservation, though, about the play is the author’s addition of a six-years-later (2010) speech by Brooke directly to the audience. It not only breaks the play’s style, it follows the practice of so many writers today who write narrative broken up by illustrative scenes and then include a sort of epilogue telling what happened later that hasn’t been shown. This play might have been better if it ended at the dramatic denouement of the script rather than with a post-script.
