OTHER DESERT CITIES Opens Thursday at Heartland

When Other Desert Cities opens at Heartland Theatre this week, it will not be the first Jon Robin Baitz play to grace that stage. It won't even be the second. As a matter of fact, Other Desert Cities completes a Baitz hat trick for Heartland.

Like Three Hotels and A Fair Country before it, Other Desert Cities is about family and the responsibility we owe to the people we're related to. Should a person do what's best for him (or her) if that isn't what's best for the family as a whole? Should blood trump one's own judgment, values and needs?

Baitz was born in the United States, but his father, a high-level exec at Carnation, the big evaporated milk/instant breakfast company, took his family to exotic places like Brazil and South Africa when Carnation sent him there. Jon Robin, also called Robbie, returned to the US for high school at Beverly Hills High School, but his time abroad certainly informed his later work as a playwright.  

Three Hotels involves a man very much like Baitz's father, a businessman whose company sells baby formula, but a formula that has resulted in illness and death for children in third-world countries. The three hotels in the title show the man, his wife, and then him again, in different places around the world, as they muse on the distance in their marriage, the compromises they've made, and the corrupting influences of ambition and money.

A Fair Country expands on those issues, looking at the family of a diplomat stationed in South Africa and charged with bringing American "culture" -- like a production of "Idiot's Delight" put on by convicts -- to people living under Apartheid. He is desperate to get out of there and bring his family to a better posting in Europe, but his wife is falling apart before his eyes, and his sons -- one an intensely political counterculture journalist and the other a vulnerable, Quixotic type who hopes to save his mother -- have major issues with the way the family operates.

You can see those same political conflicts in Other Desert Cities, with once again a family in crisis. In this one, the mother, Polly, played for Heartland by Connie de Veer,  is tougher and sharper, more of a verbal warrior, and the father, Lyman Wyatt, played by Joe Penrod, is sweeter and more kind, an actor who had a decent career in Western movies before he took a political turn and became an ambassador under his friend Ronald Reagan. But they are still conservative and traditional, on the other side of a huge political divide from their oldest son, a golden boy who took a radical, self-destructive turn as a teen, and from their daughter, a talented writer who had a mental breakdown but has now tried to write her way into understanding what happened between her parents and her brother. And then there's Trip, the youngest Wyatt, a TV producer who does his best not to get involved in the family warfare.

When daughter Brooke, played by Jessie Swiech, comes home with the memoir she's written, one that exposes all sorts of things the Wyatt parents do not want to discuss, things get dicey very quickly. Aunt Silda, played by Carol Scott, sees herself as a free-spirited knight in shining armor, and she is firmly on Brooke's side, even though Silda is living on the generosity of her sister Polly. Trip, played by Joey Banks, has always kept his head low and stayed out of trouble. But this time, lines are being drawn in the desert sand. Nobody is willing to back down, not fierce, vicious Polly, loopy Silda, well-meaning Lyman, not even Brooke, who seems so fragile.

The issues are really very interesting as Baitz unspools them in his play. Is Brooke's first responsibility to herself and to the memory of her beloved brother? Or should it be to her parents, who live in a privileged world that they are loathe to lose, one that will be shaken to its core with the revelations in Brooke's book?

You'll have to watch Other Desert Cities to make up your own mind, but Baitz is careful to give both sides their due. Other Desert Cities was nominated for five Tony Awards and was chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, winning a Tony and a Drama Desk for Judith Light, who played eccentric Aunt Silda in the Broadway production.

Sandra Zielinski directs the Heartland Theatre production, which opens February 20 with a 7:30 pm "Pay What You Can" preview performance. Performances continue through Sunday, March 9, and there will be a panel discussion of those same issues -- the right to be heard, to own one's memories vs. family peace and compromise -- following the matinee on Sunday, March 2.

For all the details, visit Heartland's Show Times or Reservations pages, or check out the Now Playing page.

Heartland Announces Cast for OTHER DESERT CITIES

Heartland Theatre and director Sandra Zielinski have announced who will be whom when they present Jon Robin Baitz's dysfunctional family drama Other Desert Cities in February.

Other Desert Cities involves the wealthy Wyeths of Palm Springs, California, a family that enjoys access to the highest levels of American society. In their heyday, they dined at the White House and hobnobbed with Ron and Nancy Reagan. Patriarch Lyman Wyeth, an actor turned ambassador, probably went shooting for big game with Dick Cheney at one time or another, while his whip-smart wife Polly, who once wrote for a hit television show with her counterculture sister Silda, no doubt enjoyed cocktails with Charlton Heston on the way to the Golden Globes. On the outside, theirs looks like a charmed life.

But they have their secrets. And daughter Brooke, a writer getting over a breakdown, decides what she needs most in the world is to air her version of one of those secrets. When she comes home with the tell-all book she’s written about that particular, devastating incident in their past, push comes to shove in the wake of truth and lies and simmering conflict between parents and children, siblings, and political ideals.

The Broadway production of Other Desert Cities was nominated for five Tony Awards, winning Judith Light the first of two awards in the Best Featured Actress category. Her role as Silda, the sister who can't quite pull it together, earned her a Drama Desk as well as that Tony. Baitz was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play.

For Heartland, Connie de Veer, an Illinois State University professor who last appeared in Sirens and The Trip to Bountiful at Heartland, will play Polly Wyeth, with Joe Penrod, recently seen as Fredrick Egerman in A Little Night Music for Prairie Fire, as her husband Lyman. Carol Scott, who played Aunt Abby in Arsenic and Old Lace at Community Players back in September and took on memorable roles in Doubt, Woman in Mind and The Beauty Queen of Lenane at Heartland, will play Polly's sister Silda.

Polly and Lyman's daughter Brooke, the one who stirs up the hornet's nest, will be portrayed by Jessie Swiech, an ISU grad who appeared in The Women of Lockerbie, Julius Caesar and Major Barbara. MFA actor Joey Banks, who appeared in Spring Awakening to open ISU's fall season, will play Brooke's younger brother Tripp, someone who seems at times to be the only grounded member of the Wyeth family.

Heartland's production of this fierce, funny play will open with a Pay What You Can preview on February 20, 2014, followed by performances from February 21 through March 9th. For showtimes, click here. For reservation information, click here.

OTHER DESERT CITIES Auditions Tonight and Tomorrow at Heartland Theatre

Director Sandra Zielinski will hold auditions tonight and tomorrow night for three roles in Heartland Theatre's production of Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, scheduled for performance in Feburary 2014.

Heartland has produced Baitz before, with A Fair Country in 2002 and Three Hotels back in 1997. Baitz's work often delves into family dysfunction and political and ethical conflicts among family members, an excellent match for an intimate space like Heartland where you can see all the characters up close.  

A Fair Country and Other Desert Cities were both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, with the 2011-12 Broadway production of Other Desert Cities also nominated for five Tony Awards. Judith Light won the Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in Featured Role in a play for her role as Silda Grauman, a warm and funny woman who also happens to be a bit of a mess. Silda depends on the financial support of her wealthy sister, Polly Wyeth, even though they have diametrically opposed views of the world. That's where Baitz's skill with fully drawn characters comes into play -- everybody has shades of gray, good and bad, no matter which side of the political or social divide they fall on.

Polly and Silda are two of the characters Zielinski will be looking to cast at these auditions. The third is Lyman Wyeth, Polly's statesman of a husband, a former ambassador with all the right connections in all the right places even though he is officially retired from politics. On Broadway, Stacy Keach played Lyman, while Stockard Channing took on Polly, his sharp, polished, perfect-on-the-outside wife.

The other roles in the play are the two Wyeth children, novelist Brooke, who has come home carrying a tell-all memoir that divulges her side of family secrets, and TV producer Trip, who tries hard not to take sides in the family wars. Those roles have been cast, but their presence as characters is key to understanding how their parents and Aunt Silda operate within the context of the play. It's Brooke's arrival with her time-bomb of a book that sets everything in motion in Other Desert Cities. Rachel Griffiths played Brooke on Broadway, while Thomas Sadoski, recently seen in HBO's The Newsroom, played Trip.

For all the details on Polly, Lyman and Silda, click here to see Heartland's audition notice. Auditions will be held from 7 to 9:30 pm at Heartland Theatre tonight and tomorrow, November 24 and 25. Actors will be asked to read from the script, with no prepared monologues necessary.

Performances dates are February 20 to March 9, 2014.

What's Coming Up From Heartland Theatre Company in 2013-14

Heartland Theatre Company has announced the schedule for its 2013-14 season, and it's full of mystery, secrets, deception and relationship drama.

Heartland's season will begin in June with the Annual 10-Minute Play Festival, every year presenting eight new short plays by winning playwrights from around the globe. This year's theme is "The Package,” with each play somehow involving a package, parcel or gift.

Next up is the Douglas Post play Earth and Sky, a tense psychological thriller, set for performances in September, 2013, and then Annie Baker's award-winning Circle Mirror Transformation, a sweet and insightful play about the members of an acting class, scheduled to hit Heartland's stage in November.

After the holiday break, Heartland will be back in February, 2014, with Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities, a look at a privileged family with secrets, and Scottish playwright Rona Munro's Iron, moving mother-daughter drama inside a women's prison, in April, 2014.

Heartland's season announcement notes that flex passes to cover this whole season go on sale on April 30th. You can see all the details here.

In the meantime, here's the rundown of shows to whet your appetitie:

Annual 10-Minute Play Festival: THE PACKAGE
June, 2013
Packages have been used as McGuffins in more plays, movies and TV shows than you can fit inside the largest box UPS will deliver. But it’s what’s inside the parcel that counts, whether it’s mysterious microfilm, memories of the past, the key to your heart, an urn full of ashes, a dangerous snake or somebody else’s cheesecake. There’s plenty of dramatic potential inside every package!

EARTH AND SKY by Douglas Post
September, 2013
Doug Post’s neo-noir thriller opens when Sara McKeon, a “would-be poet and part-time librarian” is told that her lover, David, has been killed while involved in terrible crimes. How can she believe what the police are telling her? How can she not? EARTH AND SKY will keep you on the edge of your seat as it vaults from love to betrayal, from mystery to deception, from truth to lies.

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION by Annie Baker
November, 2013
This look at a hapless acting class in a small town in Vermont was chosen as one of the Best Plays of 2010. There’s warmth and humor as well as all kinds of insight in this lovely piece about the power of seemingly silly acting exercises like the circle and the mirror to transform the lives of the people willing to leap into them.

OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz
February, 2014
The wealthy Wyeths of Palm Springs enjoy access to the highest levels of American life. But then daughter Brooke comes home with the tell-all book she’s written about the family’s murky secrets. Baitz is a specialist when it comes to dysfunctional families, and OTHER DESERT CITIES, a nominee for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, is one of the best.

IRON by Rona Munro
April, 2014
Fay has spent the last 15 years in prison for murdering her husband. When her daughter Josie visits for the first time after all these years, she wants to know why it happened, what he did, what her mum did. She can’t even remember what her dad looked like. But there are no easy answers in Munro’s wrenching look at the justice and injustice in crime and punishment.

Coming Up: Something Wild at the Goodman in 2012-13

It's time for Chicago theaters to announce their new seasons, with Steppenwolf first out of the gate a few days ago. I previewed Steppenwolf's 2012-13 season here, but today we'll be looking at the Goodman Theatre, which has announced an ambitious and exciting slate of shows falling under the theme "Expect Something Wild."

The Goodman has two theaters -- the larger, more grand Albert, which seats 856, and the smaller Owen Theatre, which has room for 468 -- which means they have several subscription plans, allowing you to do all eight shows in both theaters, or pick one or the other. There will be five mainstage shows in the Albert Theatre, and three more intimate shows scheduled in the Owen.

First up is Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth," directed by "visionary wunderkind" David Cromer for the Albert. Cromer was born in Skokie, Illinois, and he has a pile of Jefferson Awards for his work in Chicago, plus he earned a Lucille Lortel and an Obie in 2009 for his well-received (and dramatically different) direction of "Our Town." This is his first trip to the Goodman.

"Sweet Bird of Youth" is a Williams classic, with unforgettable characters like Princess Kosmonopolis, the aging screen goddess whose career is crumbling, and young, handsome gigolo Chance Wayne, who makes a big mistake when he brings his new girlfriend, the Princess, to his hometown in Mississippi, where he  comes up hard against his old girlfriend Heavenly and her powerful family."Sweet Bird of Youth" is scheduled for September 15 to October 28 in the Albert Theatre.

Next is "Black N Blue Boys," subtitled "Broken Men," by Dael Orlandersmith, set for September 29 to October 28 in the Owen. The play is described as "an explosive narrative that uncovers the darkest corners of humanity—and shatters our notions about predators and their victims." Orlandersmith was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize in 1999 with "The Gimmick" -- she won that award in 2003 and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for "Yellowman."

Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities," a smart family drama about a woman who has written a memoir revealing a long-buried family secret to the world, will play in the Albert from January 12 to February 17, 2013. "Desert Cities" was a hit at Lincoln Center last year, with a follow-up Broadway production. Ben Brantley reviewed it for the New York Times, including this major compliment: "Built with gleaming dialogue, tantalizing hints of a dangerous mystery and a structural care that brings to mind the heyday of Lillian Hellman, 'Cities' has the appeal of a Broadway hit from another age."

Christopher Shinn's "Teddy Ferrara" is up next in the Owen. Shinn is another Pulitzer Prize finalist, and his new play seems ripped from the headlines, about a gay college student whose world is turned upside-down by a campus tragedy. "Teddy Ferrara" will play February 2 to March 3, 2013.

The last play in the Owen is "The Happiest Song Plays Last," by Quiara Alegría Hudes, opening April 13 and running till May 12, 2013. Hudes was nominated for a Tony for the book of "In the Heights," but she goes farther afield with "The Happiest Song," setting the action in North Philadelphia and a town in the nation of Jordan. The first is the home of a community volunteer trying to help the needy, while the latter is the location of her cousin, an Iraq War vet, as he tries his hand as an action movie star. "The Happiest Song Plays Last" was part of the 2011 National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.

The most interesting play for me on the Goodman's schedule is Lynn Nottage's "Meet Vera Stark," which takes a look at Hollywood during its "golden" years when black actresses could play only maids. In the play, Vera Stark really is a maid, to a star known as "America's little sweetie pie," while Vera tries to hunt down her own dreams for stardom in her spare time. She makes a bit of a splash in the small roles available to her, which doesn't go over well with "America's little sweetie pie." And then the play leaps forward to the 1970s and then 2003, as film scholars try to figure out what happened to this mysterious actress who jumped off the screen way back when. Nottage is a fabulous writer, the Hollywood premise is fascinating, and I can't wait till "Meet Vera Stark" hits the spotlight in the Albert Theatre April 27 to June 2, 2013.

And the last play of the season will be Mary Zimmerman's take on "The Jungle Book," based on the 1967 Disney movie. It will feature Zimmerman's trademark stage magic, mixing songs, dance, lights, costumes and whatever else she comes up with to create stunning visuals. The Goodman is calling "The Jungle Book" the theatrical event of the season, and if it's anything like Zimmerman's other work, it will be that and more.

"The Jungle Book" will swing by the Albert Theatre June 22 to July 28, 2013.

They will add one other show, to be announced later, to its Albert schedule, presumably to fit sometime in the November/December area. Stay tuned for that announcement.

In the meantime, peruse the descriptions of the other seven shows at the Goodman website, and be sure to look closely at the "Expect Something Wild" banner, which has "The Jungle Book" written all over it in the coolest possible way.