Through 09/06 @ Dorset Theatre Festival, Vermont

“This expert cast knows their job and delivers the crackling tale of chickens coming home with all the humor, outrage, love and mercy that this great play deserves and demands.”

Dorset Theatre Festival closes out its season with a starry production of Jon Robin Baitz’s 2011 Pulitzer Finalist family drama Other Desert Cities. It is a modern twist on the classic “family secrets play,” set on Christmas Eve no less, when the biggest surprises are not under the twelve-foot-tall designer tree.

Arthur Miller said that, in the tradition of the Greeks and Ibsen, his theater is about the chickens coming home to roost. “It’s about challenges that were not met when they came up and so those challenges return and haunt people.” I couldn’t stop thinking about that quote after I watched this very exciting production of this extremely well-made play.

Walking into the beloved barn auditorium, you will need to pick your jaw up off the floor before sitting down as Christopher and Justin Swader’s mid-century chic Palm Springs living room decorated for Christmas will knock you out. All dusty tones, with a sunken sitting area, perched bar, freestanding fireplace and view of San Jacinto Mountain out of the sliding glass doors. Judy could enter any moment and host a Christmas special. The lighting which exposes and shapes every corner of this masterpiece is by Patricia M. Nichols.

The year is 2004 and the Wyeths bound onto the stage after a family-fun tennis match Christmas Eve morning to let us know that Lyman and Polly were minor Hollywood players who have traded up to become Republican insiders. They are welcoming home their two remaining children: Trip, who is a schlock reality television producer in L.A., and Brooke, a novelist who not so long ago was hospitalized for six months for depression. Not joining the foursome for tennis is Aunt Silda. The late-riser is Polly’s sister and onetime co-screenwriter on a series of teen movies.

The family banters and needles and it is revealed that Brooke has written a new book – a memoir about the family, specifically about her older brother Henry who, during the Vietnam War, was implicated in the bombing of a recruiting station that killed a janitor. Henry killed himself while on the run. She has returned home with the book and offers it to the family to read to seek their blessing. Happy Holidays!

You thought your family had skeletons in the closet…and whose doesn’t?

The cast is fantastic, starting with Laila Robins as Polly, playing the ice princess socialite palling around with Nancy Reagan and Pat Buckley at the club. She swans into the second scene with a hypnotizing gold patterned sheer top (stunning costumes by Elivia Bovenzi Blitz) holding forth and carrying on until she pitilessly threatens her daughter with banishment. Late in the play in a rending memory, she heartbreakingly reveals her maternal side as she remembers seeing Henry dressed as she would have him in a Brooks Brothers shirt.

Jayne Atkinson enters from her newly sober slumber as Silda with her hair resembling a fright wig or Cassandra’s as she slices and dices what she considers her sister’s mask of conservatism, which hides their Jewish upbringing in Texas. The character comes on strong, nailing these Reagan Republicans but we now know, she was far too kind. Atkinson has a ball with the plummy role and the audience loves her, eager to applaud her first scene exit.

Elizabeth Stahlmann is the linchpin as Brooke and she vacillates between her love, independence and needs. She has a distinct relationship with every separate character onstage and –crucially– the one who is only talked about.

Jeremy Gill’s Trip goes along to get along and would like nothing better than to chill and smoke a Yule joint until he is finally dragged into the fray which happened years before he has memories. Michael Gill plays the father Lyman, who has a very funny bit reenacting his renowned multiple death scenes from the many B-movies of his career. His gregarious spirit finally snaps as the stakes are raised and his anguished “If I have to go on one more second keeping secrets, I’d rather live alone!” changes the temperature in the room and guides us into the revelations like flipping a switch.

Director Robert Egan has a long history with Jon Robin Baitz and it shows. Even on their first night in front of an audience, despite a line bobble or two, this expert cast knows their job and delivers the crackling tale of chickens coming home with all the humor, outrage, love and mercy that this great play deserves and demands.

Other Desert Cities plays at Dorset Theatre Festival through 9/6. Tickets: www.Dorsettheatrefestival.org