Theatre News

Sinead Cusack and Clare Higgins star in Other Desert Cities at Old Vic

The play is the first of the new Old Vic season to be staged in-the-round

Higgins and Cusack will play sisters
Higgins and Cusack will play sisters
© Dan Wooller

Sinéad Cusack and Clare Higgins will play sisters in The Old Vic’s forthcoming UK premiere of Jon Robin Baitz’s play Other Desert Cities.

Directed by Lindsay Posner (Noises Off), Other Desert Cities is the first in a new season of productions which will be presented in-the-round at The Old Vic, echoing the venue's 2008 season.

The play, which opens on 24 March 2014 (previews from 13 March), is billed as "a fierce and funny drama deftly exploring family politics, love, loss and redemption".

Brooke Wyeth returns to the family home in Palm Springs for the first time in six years with some incendiary news for her Republican parents Polly and Lyman, her brother Trip and her recovering alcoholic aunt Silda. She is about to publish a memoir about her family, exposing a pivotal moment in their painful and explosive past, her actions threatening to push fractured family relations to a point beyond repair.

Other Desert Cities was first seen in 2010 at New York’s Lincoln Center, where it won the Outer Critics’ Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play before transferring to Broadway and gaining five nominations for the 2012 Tony Awards. It was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Sinéad Cusack (Polly Wyeth) returns to the Old Vi having last appeared in The Bridge Project productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale). Other recent stage work includes Juno and the Paycock (National and Abbey Theatre), Rock ‘n’ Roll (Royal Court, West End and Broadway) and The Birds (Gate, Dublin).

Clare Higgins (Silda Grauman) has won three Olivier Awards; for Hecuba at the Donmar, Sweet Bird of Youth at the National and Vincent in Brixton also at the National. Other notable theatre roles include Jocasta in Jonathan Kent’s Oedipus opposite Ralph Fiennes (National), Gertrude in Hamlet with Rory Kinnear (National), Phaedra (Donmar) and Mrs Klein (Almeida).

Playwright Jon Robin Baitz is best known in this country for his hit TV series Brothers and Sisters, about a wealthy Californian family who grapple with love, loss and living in the modern age.

Join us on our WhatsOnStage Outing to Other Desert Cities on 14 April and get a top-price ticket, free programme and drink for £35