Julia Louis-Dreyfus, making her Broadway debut, dominates this first Broadway revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities.” This is not because her performance stands out; it doesn’t. She simply holds her own in a starry five-member ensemble who together portray the fictional Wyeths, a family much like the Reagans – an old Hollywood couple who became a Republican political couple, with children who reject their values – but there are some notable differences.

Louis-Dreyfus as the matriarch Polly Wyeth has a drunk, liberal sister Aunt Silda (portrayed by Allison Janney) given to zingers and stingers, while Nancy Reagan was an only child. More significantly: Daughter Brooke Wyeth (Lily Rabe) is back home in Southern California for the holidays after having written (and about to publish) a tell-all memoir about a past family scandal and tragedy.  The Wyeth family also harbors an implausible secret.

Louis-Dreyfus dominates the new production because she is the reason why top ticket prices directly from the box office have climbed past $1,000. If ATG and the play’s 29 other producers were being honest, they would surely tell you she is the only real reason the revival exists at all. She reportedly wanted to return to the stage after more than four decades, and this is the vehicle in which she wanted to do it. At this point, whatever Julia wants, Julia gets.

It is fair to say she has earned that right. It’s not just her eleven Emmy Awards, for “Seinfeld,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine” and “Veep.”  It’s that in her first post-Seinfeld acceptance speech, she said “I’m not somebody who really believes in curses, but” – thrusting her trophy of a winged woman in the air – “curse this, baby.”   It’s a glimpse of the pluck that somehow encourages audiences far and wide to root for the appalling characters she has portrayed.

But Elaine Benes, Christine Campbell, and Selina Meyer are all farcical characters played for laughs. Polly Wyeth is not the same kind of appalling, and she doesn’t provoke the same level of amusement. The funny character in “Other Desert Cities” is her sister Aunt Silda, a role that seems better-suited for the Julia Louis-Dreyfus we think we know.  This may be the exact reason why the actress preferred Polly; for her Broadway debut, she wanted more of a challenge. (That, and maybe also because Aunt Silda is a smaller part.)

Louis-Dreyfus does a credible job; her theatrical training, though long in the past, is self-evident. But most of the memorable moments in the production belong to other cast members: The single most memorable moment for me is Ed Harris as the patriarch Lyman Wyeth re-creating how he used to die in the movies. There are riveting monologues by both Rabe and Stranger Things’ Joe Keery, who is also making his Broadway debut, in the role of the son Trip.

Whether intentionally or not, Louis-Dreyfus has chosen as her vehicle a 15-year-old play that greatly depends on the acting, because the script hasn’t improved with age.  Yes,  the characters are sharply etched, and much of the dialogue is bright, the bickering disguised as bantering, before it digs deep. But “Other Desert Cities” is still undermined by a twist ending that flattens tragedy into melodrama.

Although written during the Obama administration, in 2011, “Other Desert Cities” is set on Christmas Eve in 2004, a month after George W. Bush’s re-election. Director John Benjamin Hickey has argued that the setting 22 years ago parallels our current turbulent times.  Then as now, politics polarized the country, and divided families.  There are a few lines that demonstrate this, such as an exchange between Polly and Aunt Silda about how unsympathetically Polly treats Brooke, who had a breakdown six years earlier, from which she has now recovered.

“I just think the only way to get someone to not be an invalid is to refuse to treat them as such,” Polly declares.

“And there it is, folks,” Aunt Silda quips. “The entire GOP platform in a nutshell.”

The two sisters also argue briefly about the Iraq War, which the United States had begun some 21 months earlier (The United States began the Iran War some eight months ago.) Silda accuses Polly of complicity: “Because it’s a war declared

by a man whose father is someone with whom you occasionally dine, you keep silent.”
“Well. That’s a good speech,” Polly responds, clapping sardonically. “All that liberal sentiment.”
“Not liberal. Human.”

The politics of the day turns out to be something of a sideshow. The pointed dialogue devolves into sitcom exchanges. Silda tells Polly that her right-wing politics offends normal people.

“I like to spar,” Polly says.

“That’s what Attila the Hun said.”

In any case, the focus of the play is less on 2004 than on the 1970s, when the Wyeth’s oldest son, Henry, became radicalized, and implicated in the bombing of a military recruitment center, which resulted in the accidental killing of a bystander, and Henry’s disappearance and presumed suicide. Brooke’s memoir focuses on the effect this had on the family; we are meant to understand that she blames her parents.

Even this central incident is treated largely like a family trauma and drama.

The son Trip (Keery), the mediator in the family and the producer of a reality TV show (!), may be speaking for the playwright when he stops the other family members from delving into politics. “Look, we talk politics, the whole day will be shot to shit, really. It will just dissolve into stiff upper-lipped thermonuclear family war.”

This is the context in which I consider the last half hour of the play, the surprise ending.

It’s been fifteen years since “Other Desert Cities” debuted, but that’s not long enough, and the play is not well-enough known, for me to feel comfortable revealing the twist, even with a spoiler alert.  (I started wondering: What do critics, or just  knowledgeable friends of imminent theatergoers, do about such well-known works of theater with surprise endings as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “Fairview” and “M Buterfly?” When does the statute of limitations kick in? Do we speak freely about Ancient Greek tragedies like “Oedipus Rex,” because, after all, even new audiences two thousand years ago knew the twist in advance?)

So all I’ll say about the ending is that it drives home the apolitical nature of a play that only appears to be political.

I have had 15 years to figure out what Baitz was trying to do with “Other Desert Cities.”  (not that I spent the time wisely.)  He is too talented a writer for me to assume he was just going for a smooth vehicle for good actors. Maybe we are supposed to see how children always think they know about their parents, but how knowable is any one human being to another?

Other Desert Cities
Hudson Theater through January 17
Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes including an intermission.
Tickets: $189 to $1,118. Digital lottery and digital rush: $49
Written by Jon Robin Baitz
Directed by John Benjamin Hickey.
Scenic design by Scott Pask, costume design by Tom Broecker, lighting design by Natasha Katz; sound design by Mikaal Sulaiman; Hair and wig design by Robert Pickens; makeup by Studio Pickens
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Polly Wyeth, Ed Harris as Lyman Wyeth , Allison Janney as Silda Grauman, Joe Keery as Trip Wyeth, Lily Rabe as Brooke Wyeth

Photos by Emilio Madrid