OTHER DESERT CITIES Cast Brings a ‘New and Fresh Attack’ to the Broadway Revival

Nearly 15 years after Jon Robin Baitz’s family drama Other Desert Cities arrived in New York City, the politically divided family at the heart of the play is heading back to Broadway. 

Director John Benjamin Hickey, who collaborated early in his career with playwright Baitz, was a “massive fan” of the original production directed by his Normal Heart costar Joe Mantello — but Hickey knew that if he were to direct a revival, it had to feel “different.” 

“I had this relationship to the original production, and I really wanted to make what I felt would not be a lateral move from that,” Hickey exclusively tells BroadwayWorld, adding that the puzzle pieces began to fall into place the moment Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ name came up to play matriarch Polly Wyeth. 

“The light went off, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, she’s so right for this person,’” Hickey explains. “I didn’t know her at all. I’d never met her, but there’s a mettle to her — a spine, a steel, a toughness — and a wonderful lightness of spirit that I thought would be perfectly suited to Polly.” 

As the play evolves, he says, “it gives her an opportunity to go places that we all know she could go.” 

Louis-Dreyfus, of Seinfeld and Veep fame, is making her Broadway debut in Other Desert Cities, a play about a family hiding secrets and searching for the truth. When she agreed to do a reading of the play before it was announced for Broadway, Hickey’s A-list cast started to come together. 

Alongside Louis-Dreyfus, the revival stars Ed Harris as Lyman Wyeth, Allison Janney as Silda Grauman, Lily Rabe as Brooke Wyeth and Joe Keery as Trip Wyeth.

“I really wanted to build this family, and I wanted all five of them to have a dynamism for the play because it is a very rare thing, this play, [in that] every single person is the lead,” Hickey explains. “Every single person carries the beauty, the secrets, the pain of this play.”

Bringing Other Desert Cities — which, in 2011, starred Stockard Channing as Polly, Stacy Keach as Lyman, Rachel Griffiths as Brooke, Judith Light as Silda and Thomas Sadoski as Trip — back to Broadway with such a stacked cast is what makes it feel fresh, Hickey says. 

“I think the dynamics are different,” he explains. “The actors are all fundamentally different from the people who played them before. It’s quite frankly as simple as that. They bring a completely new and fresh attack and angle on the material.”

Plus, “It’s a different play because it’s a different time,” Hickey says, adding that it was “the main reason” he wanted to do it. 

While Other Desert Cities debuted in 2011 under Barack Obama’s presidency, the play is actually set in 2004 when George W. Bush was president and just three years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took place in 2001. 

“The themes of the play — the political themes, the familial themes, the themes about exposing the inside of a family to the public, public exposure, all of that — are different [and] have changed so much,” he says. “Our political divide, and the way politics divide a family, and the way secrets divide a family, just feels like we’re in… Well, it doesn’t feel like — it’s a stone-cold fact. We are in incredibly turbulent times more so than we were in 2011.” 

Other Desert Cities takes place “just three years after 9/11, and the world politically is still reeling from that,” Hickey notes. “We were reeling in 2004, and we’re still reeling today.” 

“Doesn’t it feel like we’re more divided than ever?” Hickey muses. “But one of the things that’s so beautiful about this play is that it doesn’t take sides.” 

Without giving away any spoilers, Other Desert Cities explores who has ownership over a family’s story as Brooke (Rabe) returns home with a memoir recounting her version of events. 

“One of the glories of Robbie’s play is that nobody’s right, nobody’s wrong, and everybody’s right, and everybody’s wrong,” says Hickey. “And in order to find the common ground, we must understand who that person on the other side is and why they make the choices they make.”

“This was all pre-Trump,” he notes of what takes place inside the Wyeth household. “In order to have any kind of real discussion about [the play], you have to try to understand why that person voted for that person. And if you just vilify it, if you just s**t on it, well then you’re no better than.”

However, Hickey says, the play is not necessarily about politics. At its core, he adds, Other Desert Cities is about a family “learning the truth about each other.” 

As the production nears its first performance on September 29, ahead of its official October 18 opening night, Hickey is excited to begin the tech process and get into the Hudson Theatre, where the Wyeth family’s Palm Springs home comes to life. 

“I think they’ve all loved being in the same room together — all that time to become that family,” says Hickey, adding that the beauty of theater is that “perfect strangers” can come together to create something extraordinary. 

“They slowly start to become one — to breathe as one,” he says. “And it’s an exciting thing to see.”

Other Desert Cities will open on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre on October 18, 2026.