Save this story Save Story Save this story The star-studded revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities drew an equally dazzling crowd for the play’s opening last night at the Hudson Theatre.
Directed by John Benjamin Hickey, the show stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus , Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Lily Rabe, and Joe Keery as the deliciously dysfunctional Wyeth family of Palm Springs—but there was no hint of the piece’s acrimony as friends and family of the cast and creators converged in the gilt lobby beforehand. Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Bradley Whitford, Ina Garten, JJ Abrams, Michael Kors, Lance LePere, and Annie Leibovitz were some of the guests on hand to see the 2011 play—a Pulitzer Prize finalist—remounted.
“What you think is true…is not quite what you thought at all. And I think that’s fascinating. It’s true of life,” said Louis-Dreyfus pre-show, of the play’s meandering plot and gut-punch twist of an ending. Making her Broadway debut, Louis-Dreyfus plays Polly Wyeth, a vodka-swilling, Goyard-toting, Republican matriarch—more Bush, less Boebert—married to Lyman (Harris), an action star turned right-wing pol. Their two adult children, Brooke (Rabe) and Trip (Keery), converge at the family home—a stiflingly beige Palm Springs fantasia—for Christmas 2004. Joining them is Silda, Polly’s recently rehabbed alcoholic sister, played with devastating bite by Janney. Brooke, a flailing but accomplished writer, arrives home with a bombshell: a soon-to-be-published memoir of the family’s dirty laundry. Merry Christmas, indeed.
“Everyone is right and everyone is wrong,” said Rabe, in a crimson Wiederhoeft gown, on the familial backstabbing and recriminations of Baitz’s drawing-room Grand Guignol. Rabe, fresh off her run in A Winter’s Tale at the Delacorte in Central Park, had one day off before she began rehearsals for this play in September. “ Winter’s Tale really did break everything open. It’s a wonderful place to start a new process from…when everything was just wide open.”
Given that the piece hinges on a memoir, what, I wondered, are some personal favorites of the cast’s? For Louis-Dreyfus, it’s Isabel Allende’s Paula , the author’s 1994 bedside recounting of her daughter’s illness and death. Janney just began Lena Dunham’s Famesick , and Keery, also making his Broadway debut, is eyeing Cameron Crowe’s The Uncool . Rabe, true to her character, says Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking .
As the boisterous crowd packed into the theater, an air of giddy expectation permeated the house. When the curtain finally rose on the Wyeths’ Palm Springs manse, swells of applause for Louis-Dreyfus delayed her first line by several beats. The ensuing two hours lived up to the preemptive praise.
Louis-Dreyfus, as the vinegary and jarringly un-PC desert doyenne, is as perfect a fit for Polly as the Escada suits filling her character’s closet. Sporting a gray-streaked Tulsi Gabbard lob, she deploys her barbs with a breeziness that makes them sting all the more—but not so much that you can’t relate to the pain she masks. If there were questions as to the aptness of revisiting this play—the political stakes of 2004 via 2011 feel quaint by comparison to our current quandaries—the ensemble performance here makes a strong case.
Post-show, the crowd traveled east a few blocks to Cipriani 42nd Street for a grand—even by Broadway standards—after-party. As an army of white-jacketed waiters scurried about, revelers like Andy Cohen and Brad Goreski chatted beneath the towering marble columns and baronial painted rafters. Meanwhile, the faux-metallic palm display at the center of the room nodded to the arid artifice excavated earlier.
At around 10 p.m., Louis-Dreyfus, in a black, ruffle-hemmed Christian Siriano gown, snuck in as Beyoncé’s “Cuff It” echoed through the vastness, the lyric “Have you ever had fun like this?” landing with added meaning on a relieved but merry cast.
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 1/20 Matthew Broderick, James Wilkie Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 2/20 Ina Garten
Expand Photo: Andy Henderson 5/20 Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos
How to Rewatch the Vogue World 2026: Milano Livestream Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 6/20 Margo Martindale
Expand Photo: Andy Henderson 7/20 Richard Schiff
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 8/20 Kate Walsh
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 9/20 Busy Philipps
Expand Photo: Andy Henderson 11/20 Ed Harris, Amy Madigan
Expand Photo: Andy Henderson 12/20 Joe Keery
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 13/20 John Benjamin Hickey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus
How to Rewatch the Vogue World 2026: Milano Livestream Expand Photo: Andy Henderson 14/20 John Slattery, David Marshall Grant, Dominic Fumusa
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 15/20 Arian Moayed
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 16/20 Dan Bucatinsky, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff
Expand Photo: Andy Henderson 17/20 Chris Perfetti
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 18/20 Kenneth Lonergan
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 19/20 J. Smith-Cameron
Expand Photo: Emilio Madrid 20/20 Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Who Shows Up—and Who Vanishes—When Your Kid Is in Trouble?
25 of the Coziest, Most Autumnal Movies to Watch This Fall
9 Adorable Photos of a (Very) Young Michael B. Jordan
Listen to The Run-Through with Vogue , a weekly podcast featuring the most exciting stories and hot takes from the worlds of culture, politics, sports and–of course–fashion
The Vogue Runway app has expanded! Update to the latest version to see all Vogue content, as well as new features like our Runway Genius quiz, Group Chats, and posts from Vogue contributors.
Become a Vogue Business Member —the ultimate resource for fashion and beauty industry professionals.
Never miss a story: Add Vogue.com to your preferred sources in Google.
Source: Lifestyle
0 Comments