Arts & Entertainment
Airing dirty laundry
Well-crafted drama explores bubbling familial tension
‘Other Desert Cities’
Through May 26
Arena Stage
1101 6th Street, SE
$40-$85
202-488-3300
arenastage.org
Scott Drummond as Trip Wyeth in ‘Other Desert Cities’ at Arena Stage. (Photo by Scott Suchman, courtesy Arena)
In her 1991 tell all “The Way I See It,” presidential offspring Patti Davis rather scandalously opened up about her famous family.
Included in a litany of unsavory revelations was how growing up her mother Nancy Reagan frequently struck her. The slightest provocation, Patti wrote, resulted in a slap across the face — almost daily and sometimes with a hairbrush. It was her tightly wound mother’s way of maintaining control. At the time, Reagan reps denied all assertions.
With his latest play, “Other Desert Cities” (now playing at Arena Stage), gay playwright Jon Robin Baitz takes us into that spooky world of California’s Republican elite where appearances and loyalty trump all. Meet his characters Lyman and Polly Wyeth. Part of Ronald Reagan’s inner circle, they gave up show biz (he acted and she wrote screenplays with her sister Silda) for the political arena. Lyman was made an ambassador. Years later, removed from power, they live surrounded by photos from their heady past and pass sunny days playing tennis, sneaking cigarettes, towing the Republican line and polishing the legacy of their friends and mentors, Ron and Nancy.
Baitz’s play takes place at Christmas time in 2004 at the Wyeth’s Palm Springs home. They’re joined by their two surviving children — Trip, a TV producer, and Brook, a blocked novelist living on the East coast who struggles with severe depression. Polly’s alcoholic sister Silda, a little shaky and fresh out of rehab, rounds out the party. What should be a warm reunion devolves into an unhappy holiday when Brooke drops a bombshell — she’s written a new book. It’s a memoir dealing with her older brother Henry’s involvement with a radical anti-Vietnam War group and subsequent suicide. It also explores the idea that her parents abandoned Henry when he needed them most. Whether Brooke is interested in presenting truths or settling scores emerges as the hot yuletide topic.
Not surprisingly, the elderly Republican couple despises unwashed peaceniks, but it’s those smug lefties who really get to Polly. When she learns that prior to its fall release, Brooke’s book will be excerpted in an impending issue of The New Yorker, Polly becomes doubly enraged. Revealing secrets to these readers is too much. Brooke’s transgression is unforgivable; and her parents, Polly promises, will never feel the same toward her again. Lyman simply asks that Brooke wait until he and Polly are dead before she publishes.
Absorbing, witty and zinger-filled (directed at the unfashionably dressed and neocons alike), Baitz’s script is supported by smart staging and good design. Director Kyle Donnelly maintains intimacy in Arena’s big Fichlander theater in-the-round space (but unfortunately some dialogue is garbled when actors inevitably must turn their backs to sections of the audience); and Kate Edmund’s set — the expansive living room of a mid-century, desert showplace complete with faux stone bar and sunken circular fireplace — establishes the older Wyeth’s way of life at a glance.
Baitz’s play is further bolstered by a strong four-person cast, especially Helen Carey as Polly. Last season at Arena, Carey played Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” and now she’s back as another complicated matriarch of yet another dysfunctional family. Her Polly is a scary amalgam — charming, driven, competitive and fiercely loyal. Carey superbly captures the dynamism. As Brooke, Emily Donahoe conveys sensitivity and her own brand of grit. And despite the ramrod posture and sharply delivered wisecracks, Martha Hackett imbues embittered Silda with a lot of vulnerability. She’s no match for her sister and she knows it.
Openly gay New York actor Scott Drummond is excellent as Brooke’s caring younger brother Trip, a likable athletic preppy with a porn addiction. Too young to have known his late brother or remember the drama surrounding his death, Trip is the family’s peacemaker.
Larry Bryggman’s Lyman is all bonhomie and surface affability. A former movie actor best remembered for his death scenes in cowboy and gangster pictures, Lyman doesn’t want drama off-screen. But in the end, it’s Lyman who makes the play’s boldest move.
Eventually, Patti Davis and the former First Lady buried the hatchet despite Davis’ memoir. Hopefully all is truly forgiven, but at least the mother and daughter sensibly agreed that happy family makes a better look than intergenerational feuding. And does art imitate life entirely at Arena? You have through the end of May to find out.
The Petal Release Party and Drag Show was held at Spark Social on Friday, July 31. Performers included Tiara-Missou, Labianna and Darcy de la Cuadra.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
Celebrity News
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon
AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.
The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.
“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.
Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.
Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”
Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.
Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.
Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.
“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”
Theater
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’
Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.
A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.
White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”
Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.
“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?
REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.
BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?
WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.
I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.
These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.
Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.
BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?
WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.
I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].
BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?
WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.
BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?
WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.
Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.
PHOTOS: Petal Release Party
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
PHOTOS: Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade
Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade draws hundreds of thousands
BLADE ENDORSEMENT: Susan Stewart for mayor of Rehoboth Beach
PHOTOS: Lambda Legal in the Pines
Calendar: July 31-August 6
Taiwan’s government has failed to update process to change gender markers on ID documents
