EMAV Review: An Emotionally Dizzying 'Desert Cities' at A Public Fit

★★★★½ - Delicious

A Public Fit’s meticulous, polished production of Jon Robin Baitz‘s Other Desert Cities affords the adventurous theatregoer a highly satisfying, nay “shattering” emotional journey.

To say that everything is not as it seems in this cautionary tale is a cataclysmic understatement. We think we know the Wyeth family, at the heart of this conflict. The situation seems all too familiar; the heroes and villains all too well defined. The subtext of political trajectories seems transparent. Some of us might smugly get on one premature soapbox or another, presuming we know the outcome of the journey.

And then the rug (or rather the desert) gets pulled out from under our feet. Can it be we have been playing in the wrong sandbox? The maxim “judge not and be not judged” comes to mind. The situation:

Brooke Wyeth has returned home to Palm Springs, the only destination on the I-10 that is worthy of appellation on the highway sign directing us to “Palm Springs and other desert cities.” As the Wyeth family’s only daughter, Brooke is on a mission. She wants to inform her parents of her intent to publish a take-no-prisoners expose of a family tragedy, and defiantly seeks their blessing. It needs no spo