The Wyeths have wealth, fame, and a political legacy—and they preside over it all from their desert perch in Palm Springs. They also have a daughter, Brooke, who knows how to push their buttons. Home for Christmas, she reveals that she’s written a tell-all memoir, which dredges up a pivotal family event that changed their lives and now threatens to destroy everything her parents have built.
“In the last several years we’ve seen a return to the ‘well-made play’ in the US, plays whose structure draws on the strength of playwrights like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. It’s given us entertaining stories with an impossible ethical dilemma at the centre in more recent plays like Doubt, Rabbit Hole, August: Osage County, and last season’s Clybourne Park,” said Rachel Ditor, the play’s director. “What’s delicious about these well-crafted scripts is the room they make for great actors to interpret, to charm an audience, and then suddenly force us to challenge our assumptions about them, and ultimately, about ourselves.”
Playwright Jon Robin Baitz is a critically acclaimed American playwright and screenwriter, who has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His many plays often centre on the fragility of interpersonal relationships, and the moral corollaries of our actions. He has earned numerous plaudits for his work, garnering a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award, and has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts. During the late nineties, he began to write for television, scripting episodes for Alias and The West Wing. These forays into screenplay led ABC to offer him his own show: he was the creator and executive producer of Brothers & Sisters. Other Desert Cities, first produced in New York in 2011, marks Baitz’s first play since leaving Brothers & Sisters.
The production runs September 19–October 20, 2013 at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. Call the Arts Club Box Office at 604.687.1644 or visit artsclub.com.
