Other Desert Cities

Other Desert Cities, at Broadway's Booth Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: ***1/2 out of ****

I've been hooked on a few nighttime soap operas over the years, most notably Dallas and Falcon Crest. But there hasn't been one recently that captured my interest until Brothers & Sisters, which ABC canceled in May after a five-year run.

So a big part of my excitement about Other Desert Cities stemmed from knowing that it was written by Jon Robin Baitz, the creator of Brothers & Sisters, and included a cast member from the series, Rachel Griffiths.

In some ways, Other Desert Cities felt like a very special episode of Brothers & Sisters: it revolves around the problems of a wealthy and prominent family. All the nighttime soap ingredients are present - drug addiction, depression, alcoholism. Family secrets are about to be revealed and a long-buried scandal unearthed. There's a black sheep, too.

Now, I don't mean any of that as a knock. Popular fiction is tough to get right and I'd rather read John Grisham than John Updike. And I liked Other Desert Cities a lot. It's a highly polished work with terrific performances. Baitz has a good ear for dialogue. The direction by Joe Mantello makes the action clean and clear. But it seemed like something I'd seen before.

Heading the family are Stacy Keach and Stockard Channing as Lyman and Polly Wyeth. He's a former actor turned Republican Party official and ambassador. She's a former screenwriter. They travel in the same circles as the Reagans. (When the scandal broke, Polly mustered all of her strength to get back in the good social graces of Ron and Nancy.)

When the play opens, it's Christmas 2004 and the family has gathered at the Wyeths' home in Palm Springs. John Lee Beatty has designed a living room that looks beautiful in a rustic kind of way, with a huge stone wall, but not especially comfortable.

The source of tension is Brooke's plan to publish a tell-all memoir which, needless to say, is upsetting to her family.

I've loved Griffiths from TV and movies and she's riveting onstage as well, playing a vulnerable woman suffering from depression who's about to let out all of this smoldering anger toward her parents. A novelist with one successful book, the memoir has enabled her to break through her writer's block. She feels compelled to publish it, no matter how much pain it causes.

As her brother Trip, a producer of highly successful reality-TV shows, Thomas Sadoski is more easygoing. Much younger, he doesn't share her intense anger. Baitz makes an interesting point here, how siblings can have widely divergent memories of their childhood and how parents can change over time so that maybe they were raised differently.

Channing and Judith Light as two very different sisters are a joy to watch as well. Polly is the picture of composure while Light's Silda is messy, an acerbic alcoholic. They're Jewish but Polly seemed pretty WASPY. Silda explains this with one of the play's best lines: "We're Jewish girls who lost our accents along the way but that wasn't enough for you, you had to become a goy."

While I liked the way Baitz explored the family dynamic, his attempt at getting political struck me as more cliched. Keach's Lyman fulminates against the generation that ruined this country with their drugs, free sex and radical politics. Brooke and Silda rail against the intolerance of conservative Republicans.

What stood out for me was the way Other Desert Cities explores the heart of this fractious family. Polly and Lyman don't share Brooke's view that her memoir will be cathartic. It forces them to come clean about secrets that they've been keeping for a very long time. (To be honest, the plot twist wasn't very original.)

Baitz gives them both powerful, emotional speeches. For all the coldness and harshness with which Brooke tries to portray them, Lyman and Polly Wyeth are caring people. The play is a testament to a parent's love for their child - no matter what. It's also a testament to what very rich and powerful people are able to do for their children.

Baitz left Brothers & Sisters after a year due to disagreements with the network over the show's direction. At the time, he decried "the demographic demands that have turned America into an ageist and youth-obsessed nation drives the storylines younger and younger, whiter and whiter, and with less and less reflection of the real America.

I'll give Baitz credit for including older characters in Other Desert Cities but he's written a play pretty similar to what he's criticized the networks for doing. It's as white as can be and not exactly reflective of the "real America."

Still, it was tremendously entertaining to see a juicy family drama onstage just like the ones that I've loved in novels and on TV. And it's always comforting to be reminded that rich people have problems, too.

Watching my tv on dvd

Catching up on tv series that I missed is one of the joys of my Netflix subscription. (Why didn't I buy stock?!) Some, I've loved - The Sopranos, Arrested Development, Sex and the City. Some, I watched a few episodes and decided they just weren't for me - Sports Night.

In fact, I think I prefer television this way. I'd rather wait until the end of the season and just catch up on all the episodes at once. And honestly, with some series, like Lost, I'm so lost that I might as well wait until the final episode airs and then watch it from beginning to end.

Anyway, I never watched thirtysomething when it aired but I've enjoyed one of its stars, Patricia Wettig, as the devious Holly Harper on Brothers & Sisters. So now that it's finally coming out on dvd, I'm curious enough to check it out. According to the Los Angeles Times, Season 1 will be released on Aug. 25, with subsequent seasons coming about every six months.

The series, about a group of baby boomer yuppies in Philadelphia in the 1980s, was influenced by the 1983 movie The Big Chill. It ran on ABC for four years, from 1987 to 1981. And of course, it added a word - thirtysomething - to the vocabulary.

Mazel tov Kevin and Scotty!

I'm a day late with this, but a very big mazel tov to Scotty Wandell and Kevin Walker (Luke MacFarlane and Matthew Rhys) who had their commitment ceremony Sunday night, on the Season 2 finale of ABC's Brothers & Sisters. Just tell me where to send the blender!

It was great to see Kevin surrounded by the loving, supportive Walker family - his mother, his uncle, his brothers and sisters and their children. Despite Kevin's protestations that he wanted to keep it simple, his mother, family matriarch Nora (Sally Field) went over the top with her preparations. She told him, rightly, that he deserved as wonderful a ceremony as his siblings had on their wedding days.

My favorite comment in that regard comes from Steven Frank at afterelton.com, who expresses amazement that Kevin and Scotty are opposed to having a big shindig: "If it were me, I’d want a huge, glitzy wedding with tons of guests so that I could finally start recouping the $34,789 I’ve spent on other people’s wedding gifts." Isn't that the truth!

In The Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert's article notes that Kevin and Scotty's ceremony was used by ABC as a May sweeps event, designed to increase viewership during a month when advertising rates are set. He compares it to "so many early, pioneering network attempts to show gay people doing what straight people do, such as simply talking in bed, which triggered protest in 1989 over an episode of thirtysomething. When Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet on Ellen in 1997, there was brouhaha and there were boycotts."

At it's heart, Brothers & Sisters is a soap opera, and there were the usual plot twists and moments of intrigue. In fact, a Los Angeles Times story that referred to a controversial kiss had nothing to do with Kevin and Scotty, who have kissed many, many times. It was about Kevin's brother Justin (David Annable) and his blossoming relationship with Rebecca Harper (Emily VanCamp) who, it turns out, isn't his half-sister after all. Whew, what a lucky break. Thank God for DNA testing!

One of the reasons I like the show is that it reminds me of one of my favorites from the 1980s, Falcon Crest. They're both about California family dynasties - just substitute the Walkers' organic produce company for a vineyard, and they're practically the same show. Although Sally Field's Nora Walker is much warmer and more likable than Jane Wyman's conniving Angela Channing.

Except that it involved two men, Kevin and Scotty's commitment ceremony wasn't any different from the countless weddings that we've seen on television over the past 50 years. And the utter normalcy was nice, even down to the cliches. I mean, there's the obligatory meeting beforehand, with a tender moment between the two. Then, during the ceremony, Kevin forgets the rings. (Wow, that's never happened before in a movie or television wedding!)

While they've had their ups and downs, we've seen Kevin and Scotty gradually become a loving, committed couple over the past two seasons, so this was a logical next step for them. Although the way the proposal came about wasn't exactly the most romantic: Kevin wanted to be able to have Scotty covered by his health insurance plan, which he could do if they were registered as domestic partners under California law.

The law, enacted in 1999, gives gay and lesbian couples hospital visitation rights, adoption rights, access to family health insurance plans and survivor pension benefits, the ability to file joint state tax returns, and a host of other legal protections that married heterosexual couples simply take for granted.

For me, one of the nicest moments came before the ceremony, when Scotty thanks Nora for everything she's done for him, and she responds, "I should be thanking you for making Kevin so happy, and I get another son." Even though Sally Field's character is supposed to be Jewish, and she makes the most unconvincing Jewish mother ever, that moment was pretty sweet.

I give the writers credit for not portraying a totally rosy picture of the reaction to Kevin and Scotty's relationship. Scotty's parents aren't as accepting as Kevin's family. Scotty's mother and father refuse to attend the ceremony, despite a personal plea from Kevin. "We're doing this because we want to be a family and we cherish family as much as you do,'' he tells them.

While they assure him that they love their son, Scotty's mother admonishes Kevin, "Don't ask us to celebrate this contrived event. We can't sit there and have you rub our noses in this pretend wedding. It is too painful and too insulting." But Scotty's father appears to be a little more conflicted. As Kevin is walking to his car, he rushes out to him, tells him to try and understand that "we're not bad people," and gives him a pair of cufflinks that he promised long ago to give to Scotty on his wedding day.

It'll be interesting to see how Scotty and Kevin evolve in Season 3, whether they'll adopt, whether Scotty's family will become more supportive. Through the first two seasons, the Walker children have had their share of rocky relationships. Kevin and Scotty may turn out to be the most stable couple of all.

"They will be a family," producer Monica Breen told USA TODAY. "Kevin deserves a stable relationship in the same way that [sisters] Kitty, Sarah and all the others deserve it. He will be facing many questions in his life — but now he has someone to share that with."