Straight from its highly successful run at Lincoln Center, Other Desert Cities won the Drama League Award for Distinguished Play, was named Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle, and was a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Baitz (“The Substance of Fire,” “A Fair Country”) presents a finely crafted drama focusing on a young novelist returning to her Palm Springs family home as she announces a completed memoir and her desire to unlock the lives they once had. As in all desert lands, mirage can transfix and trick the inhabitants and as the heat gives way, reality comes into sharp and unrelenting focus. The inaugural production of the 2012-13 season is directed by Gil Lazier (FUSION’s God of Carnage, August: Osage County, How the Other Half Loves and Parlour Song).

Other Desert Venues!! FUSION Theatre Company is growing! We're thrilled to announce performances beyond our home for the past ten years, The Cell. FUSION will present Other Desert Cities: Thursday, Sept. 6, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM GALA OPENING SOLD OUT!! Friday, Sept. 7, The Cell, ABQ, 6PM (Boardroom to Boards Night!) Saturday, Sept. 8, The Cell, ABQ, 2PM (matinee) SOLD OUT!! Saturday, Sept. 8, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM SOLD OUT!! Sunday, Sept. 9, The Cell, ABQ, 6PM SOLD OUT!! ----- Thursday, Sept. 13, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM SOLD OUT!! Friday, Sept. 14, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM SOLD OUT!! Saturday, Sept. 15, The Cell, ABQ, 2PM (matinee) SOLD OUT!! Saturday, Sept. 15, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM SOLD OUT!! Sunday, Sept. 16, The Cell, ABQ, 6PM SOLD OUT!! ----- Tuesday, Sept. 18, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM SOLD OUT!! Wednesday, Sept. 19, The Cell, ABQ, 8PM SOLD OUT!! ----- Friday, Sept. 21, The Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, 8PM Saturday, Sept. 22, The Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, 2PM (matinee) Saturday, Sept. 22, The Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, 8PM Thank you, New Mexico, for your outstanding support for "Other Desert Cities." We sold out The Cell and had wonderful, full houses at The Lensic in Santa Fe!

 

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Free parking is plentiful in our lot just north of the theatre. The Cell is located at 700 1st St. N.W., just west of Broadway and south of Lomas. Parking in Santa Fe is available at a number of inexpensive public lots in the immediate vicinity of the Lensic.

Review, our inaugural presentation at the historic Lensic Theatre, by James M. Keller in Pasatiempo:

A theatrical infusion from FUSION

Santa Fe's Theater aficionados had cause to rejoice this past weekend when the FUSION Theatre Company of Albuquerque launched a collaborative venture with, and at, The Lensic Performing Arts Center. Our hometown companies have provided Santa Feans with a wealth of theatrical productions over the years, but it has proved difficult for troupes to sustain the kind of support needed to guarantee professional-level dependability. A city with an arts community as vibrant as Santa Fe's should be able to nourish theater companies with differing missions and aspirations, but the scene cannot be complete without a professional-level company to set a high standard and raise the bar all around. This initiative may fill that niche.

FUISON's auspicious first production at the Lensic was Other Desert Cities, a smart, multilayered, neatly written play by Jon Robin Baitz. It was warmly received in New York when unveiled Off Broadway (at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater) in early 2011, and apparently it took on further polish when it moved to a Broadway run at the Booth Theatre later that year.

Clybourne Park (by Bruce Norris) nosed it out for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play. After seeing both productions on consecutive days last April, I judged them at nearly a dead heat but would give the edge to Other Desert Cities. As it happens, FUSION will bring Clybourne Park to Santa Fe (on March 22-23), in a season that also includes Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain (on Nov. 16-17) and Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones (on May 10-11). All these plays have already proved their bona fides. It is a fine and commendable thing for a theater company to devote itself to shepherding brand-new works into existence—which FUSION sometimes does in Albuquerque— but there is also wisdom in selecting recent plays that have already been vetted through earlier productions elsewhere.

Other Desert Cities is a tragicomedy involving five members of the Wyeth family. Father and mother Lyman and Polly both retired from lesser Hollywood careers to devote themselves to Republican politics in Southern California, where they used to hobnob with their pals Ron and Nancy and now live in emotionally stunted comfort in Palm Springs. Their son Trip produces a cheesy TV courtroom show; daughter Brooke, author of a single novel, gets considerable mileage out of the time she spent hospitalized for depression; and Polly’s sister, Silda, is fresh out of rehab and now bivouacking at the Wyeths’ home. Familial love is not in doubt here, but it gets expressed in stressful ways. Brooke arrives for Christmas bearing the manuscript of her new memoir, which details how the loss of another brother years earlier, and her parents’ reaction to that tragedy, shaped her painful life. It turns out she does not have the whole story, and as the truth emerges in the course of the play, easy judgments viewers may have attached to the characters grow complicated indeed.

Apart from a brief and touching epilogue, the production, directed by Gil Lazier and designed sparingly but effectively by Richard Hogle, unrolled entirely in the Wyeths’ living room, which at once betokened their affluence and a sense of daredness, of holding onto the past. The five actors achieved a strong sense of ensemble at the opening Santa Fe performance, on Sept. 21. Each earned the audience’s sympathy in his or her own way. Joanne Camp, as Polly, grew the most in the span of her portrayal, from a seemingly soulless snob to a matriarch who has charted what she believes, rightly or wrongly, to be the best course for her family. Paul Blott depicted Lyman as a man nearly exhausted by his self-imposed emotional captivity, a man who cannot continue much further under the weight of his burden. Jacqueline Reid , as Brooke, may have claimed the audience’s sympathies at first, but she also invested her part with a degree of narcissism that may have left viewers guiltily wishing for her downfall—not an easy balance within a role. James Louis Wagner struck a winning presence as Trip, whose wide-eyed charm was his weapon against confrontation. Laurie Thomas was a disheveled yet effective Silda, a recovering addict just barely holding on, but I felt Lazier might have profitably directed her more in the direction of comedy. Making an addict a comic foil would certainly raise issues of taste, but I think that is what Baitz wanted this part to accomplish. The climate around the Wyeth house is tense, and Silda seems the person best suited to temper the prickly mood. In general Lazier’s direction was logical and unobtrusive. He seemed intent on underplaying a couple of highly fraught exchanges, including (oddly) the moment in which the family’s darkest secret is revealed. But on the whole his directorial instincts seemed firmly in sympathy with the play’s strengths, and the tempo he adopted allowed the audience to appreciate the literary aspects of Baitz’s achievement without making the play seem overlong.

FUISON’s three Santa Fe performances of Other Desert Cities followed 12 go-rounds at The Cell, the company’s considerably smaller home theater in Albuquerque. The production made the transition to The Lensic’s larger space seamlessly. If you missed it, too bad for you, but as the season unrolls you’ll have three more chances to get on board for the most promising live-theater venture to hit this town in a good long while.

Anya Sebastian, Broadway World.com; "BWW Reviews: Fusion Theatre Opens Season with Sparkling Production of OTHER DESERT CITIES": "It’s not easy to slap a label on OTHER DESERT CITIES. Jon Robin Baitz has created a play that is truly a hybrid, combining laugh-out-loud humor with pin-drop silence, mystery and mounting suspense. Add to that hot-button emotional issues, including political and generational differences, religion, drugs, social status, gender equality, suicide, alcoholism… all delivered with humor and wrapped in a blanket of family secrets, and the result is a dense and highly entertaining, theatrical evening.

The story unfolds, over the Christmas holidays, in the living room of Polly and Lyman Wyeth (wonderfully well portrayed by Joanne Camp and Paul Blott, who really do resonate as a couple.) Two well-heeled, old school Republicans, with a background in Hollywood and GOP politics, the Wyeths are now retired and have removed themselves from the spotlight, to settle in a comfortable, if bland, home in Palm Springs. The artificial, perfunctorily adorned Christmas tree is a perfect symbol of their lifestyle.
They are reluctantly sharing their home with Polly’s sister, Silda, a recovering alcoholic, fresh out of rehab and broke. Silda (perfectly played as a larger-than-life character by Laurie Thomas) is the complete opposite of her socially conscious sibling. An outspoken, ‘in your face’ progressive, she cares nothing for appearances and tells it like it is.

Visiting for the holidays are the Wyeths’ two, grown children. Their son, Trip (convincingly played by James Louis Wagner) lives in Los Angeles, produces a successful, fake courtroom reality show and does his best to stay emotionally afloat. His sister, Brooke, a writer, now living on the east coast, didn’t do so well and suffered a severe breakdown. (Jacqueline Reid does an outstanding job, portraying this clever, tortured and talented young woman.)

The plot thickens when Brooke reveals that she has brought with her the finished manuscript of her latest book, a novel that became a memoir of her early childhood. It’s also the story of her brother, Henry, who committed suicide many years before, after being involved with a radical group that was implicated in a bombing scandal. Henry’s name is never mentioned in the family and it’s time to find out why.

The final resolution, which involves the uncovering of a long-buried, dark family secret, is the weakest part of the play, but the overall quality of the script and the ease and excellence of the acting, carry the day.

The characters are all perfectly cast and they really do resonate and interact as a team, as well as a convincing family unit. I was astonished to learn that they rehearse for only three weeks. “It works, because we don’t have time for egos,” says Dennis Gromelski, Fusion Theatre’s co-founder and president. “Everyone, including me, leaves their ego at the door.”

FUSION is Albuquerque’s only professional theater company and it certainly shows in the quality of this production of OTHER DESERT CITIES. As well as the performances, everything, from the direction to the costumes and lighting, is impeccable. The show runs through September 19th at The Cell, 700 Ist. St. NW and, if it’s not already sold out, do yourself a favor and go!

FUSION Theatre Company has just established a working relationship with The Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe and, for the first time, after completing its Albuquerque run, the play will move to the Lensic for an exploratory weekend, September 21/22. What a great kick-off! Santa Fe is in for a treat. OTHER DESERT CITIES deserves to be a sell-out."

Ben Brantley, NYT: "There was much rejoicing when this Jon Robin Baitz play had its premiere Off Broadway at Lincoln Center in January. It was not only the most thoroughly integrated and sustained work from Mr. Baitz, who had been regarded as a promising wunderkind for long past his sell-by date. This witty, deeply enjoyable family drama also had a five-member cast of top-flight virtuosos."

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: "...in the non-political sense, this is an uncommonly democratic play. All five characters have surprising layers; their behavior is never straight-up black or white. That means they each get an equitable share of the wittiest zingers (the first act, in particular, is a one-liner-palooza), but also bracing moments of conflict and self-exposure."

Perez Hilton: "...We are soooooo thankful we expanded our horizons and ventured out of our comfort zone of seeing just musicals during our current NYC trip! Plays can be just as entertaining!!!! We are STILL absorbing everything from Other Desert Cities on Friday night. The show was so pleasurable and rewarding to watch! It was emotionally draining and invigorating at the same time! Like Death Of A Salesman it examines the complexities of families and the dynamics between relatives. But, being a new play, it obviously feels much more current and relevant. It felt like a beautiful episode of Brothers & Sisters, which makes sense because during intermission we read in the Playbill that Jon Robin Baitz, who wrote the show, also created Brothers & Sisters. The play is poignant but funny! It's understanding on "understanding" is inspired!"