Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach

Photo by Joan Marcus

Other Desert Cities swept into Broadway, an all but guaranteed hit, thanks to the kvelling reception it garnered during its Lincoln Center run, now with a couple of gutsy changes in the cast, namely star Judith Light replacing luminary Linda Lavin as the recovering alcoholic Silda, sister of Polly, the continuing star Stockard Channing, and television leading lady Rachel Griffiths replacing outgoing Elizabeth Marvel as Polly’s daughter Brooke, the catalyst trouble maker of Jon Robin Baitz’s play, his most satisfactory play to date and his debut on Broadway, an unbeatable way to go. Intriguing as the women are, they are matched and on occasion bettered by their male counterparts, Stacy Keach as father Lyman, an ex-ambassador, ex-cowboy movie star, all the way Republican fat cat honcho. And last and best, Thomas Sadoski, son Trip to Polly and Lyman, brother to Brooke and nephew to Silda, the smartest of them all, even if he makes “reality” TV shows. Or maybe because? Sadoski, Keach and Channing have been with the play from scratch and it shows but in very little time they’ll all be blended as director Joe Mantello wishes, urges, demands because they’re all so good.

Daughter Brooke and son Trip have come to the seductive retirement digs in Palm Springs of their parents, Polly and Lyman, to spend Christmas. The all gold and silver decorator decorated tree is up near the compulsory decorator Palm Springs fireplace with the gold and silver packages winking quietly under the gently spreading artificial branches. Lyman’s and Polly’s home is lush, overly understated and superbly conceived and executed by outstanding set designer John Lee Beatty and all of them are dressed to hell and gone by costume designer David Zinn, the kids carefully sloppy, the parents carefully in their expensive, retirement togs, the odd ball sister/aunt a deliberate clash in thrift shop Pucci and ilk. Our eyes and ears get it all; a soothing, successful show.

But playwright Baitz knows this is the way to zzzz’s and stops that flat. He has his mother and her sister, both Hollywood writers in their day, loaded with zingers, Dad filled with head shaking clichés and kids being mature smartasses, just to tide us over until Brooke announces she’s over her writer’s block, has brought her new book, it’s not a novel as they expected, it is a memoir about them. Especially about their dead brother, Henry, and how he died. And Christmas is over with a bang.

You will enjoy the battles that ensue. You will be pissed off at the pressure the loving parents bring to bear to keep her from publishing. You will be delighted by the conflicting clashes of who’s right, who’s wrong and switch your support back and forth until we come to the explosion erupting from formerly cool Dad and the denouement you never expected changing everything. You think. Playwright Baitz and director Mantello having charmed you into support of people you’d ordinarily prefer to bitch about, continue to a perfectly satisfying conclusion. Then, take a step further. They took that extra step while the play was at Lincoln Center and got away with it, so, of course it’s here on Broadway why in hell not? The play is set in 2004; the extra, brief step at the end is set in 2010, presumably after Polly and Lyman have passed on so they cannot be hurt by the revelations in Brooke’s book and their Republican cocoon of power and prestige remains intact to the end of the life they had chosen to live.

So what do Mantello and Baitz do? They had brought the play to the conclusion which was already applauded by those not in the know. Then, they give Brooke her author’s moment years later. She’d delayed her book. She reads from it. Briefly. Not briefly enough. We are aghast. It’s crap. The whole scene is quite, quite wicked. Bait’s satisfyingly conventional, perfectly classic theater piece has a savage bite in the tail, quite, quite very much today.

Booth Theater, 222 West 45^th Street at Shubert Alley. Tickets: $51.50 - $126.50. 212-239-6200. Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.