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April 24, 2025

It’s not every day that you get to see a production of a hit Broadway show written by one neighbor and directed by another – both of whom are icons in their fields.

But that’s what living in Rancho Mirage is like, and that’s what Jon Robin Baitz’s play, “Other Desert Cities,” reminds you that it’s like.

The preview of the Coachella Valley Repertory production of “Other Desert Cities,” which formally opens tonight in Cathedral City, is the fourth iteration of the show I’ve seen. I watched it in Los Angeles after its Broadway run and I saw it in the CVRep’s tiny Rancho Mirage theater in 2013. Of course, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play also has had productions in other desert cities.

But this Cathedral City show is the best I’ve seen, largely because director Philip Wm. McKinley uses his knowledge of the desert to make it hyper local. McKinley, director of such big Broadway musicals as “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark” and “The Boy From Oz,” starring Hugh Jackman, elicits great performances from his out-of-town cast, and everything rings true.

“Other Desert Cities” is about a Walter and Leonore Annenberg-type family that has become a symbol of turn-of-the-century Republican values despite the demise of a son involved in a horrific crime. The patriarch, Lyman Wyeth, is a former actor who, like Walter, became an ambassador. He and his wife, Polly, a former screenwriter, are part of a social circle with the Reagans and Bloomingdales. Their daughter, Brooke, writes a Patti Davis-type tell-all book about her family that causes consternation as the family gathers for Christmas in the desert.

The play’s title comes from Brooke wearily recalling the I-10 sign pointing drivers to Palm Springs or Other Desert Cities, and saying metaphorically, “Sometimes I want to turn off at Other Desert Cities and just keep going.”

Baitz fills the play with insightful nuggets that draw knowing laughs from the locals, like Polly saying, “We have meth labs just outside of town,” and Lyman sneaking a cigarette and telling Brooke, “It’s amazing what you will do to entertain yourself in the desert.”

But McKinley complements these gems with sights and sounds that give the show an accurate sense of place from a historical and anthropological perspective. The show opens, before the first line of dialogue, with a recording of Barry Manilow singing “(There’s No Place Like) Home For the Holidays,” telling us it’s Christmas and Barry is omnipresent in the Coachella Valley then. During breaks in the action, we hear radio announcers delivering accurate local news from the era, such as Dorothy Kloss of “The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies” getting a City of Palm Springs day in her honor, which is then noted in dialogue by the Wyeth son, Trip.

Visually, the show is distinguished by the mid-century modern set created by the venerable Jimmy Cuomo. A 360-degree image of a backyard with a pool, palm trees and bougainvillea is seen through a back wall window, expanding the stage and providing the indoor-outdoor theme of mid-century modern architecture to match the interior design. The set is like an extra character in the play, telling us the house occupants are bigger than life, like the members of Tamarisk Country Club when Annenberg, Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra belonged to it. But the family story is intimate within a physically large setting.

Moira Wilkie’s lighting on the backyard images changes subtly with the time of day and the wigs or hair styles by Lynda Shaeps also tell stories. Lois Robbins, as Polly, wears her country club-styled hair kind of like her role model, Nancy Reagan (and exactly like the late Palm Springs maven, Rosalie Hearst). Susan J. Jacks, as her frank, funny but chaotic sister, Silda, has a rat nest for a head of hair.

The cast, also including Dawn Cantwell as Brooke, Bruce Sabath as Lyman, and Luke Wehner as Trip, have varied careers, but they all come together to realize the wit and drama of the play.

McKinley and artistic director Adam Karsten say Baitz didn’t participate in the development of this production. The L.A. native, who wrote last year’s brilliant limited series, “Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans,” is now co-creating a legal drama starring Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson and Kim Kardashian. But I think he’d love this CVRep production of “Other Desert Cities.”

It continues through May 4. Go to CVRep.org for ticket information.