ongoing -Sat. Feb. 9

      Among Boston’s many impressive theatrical companies, few are as consistent and popular as SpeakEasy Stage Company.  Among the reasons for this sustained excellence are the Company’s acclaimed actors and directors. Among these, one of the most consistent and consistently acclaimed is Scott Edmiston. Having helmed the SpeakEasy productions of such hit shows as Next Fall, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), The History Boys, The Light in the Piazza, The Last Sunday in June, and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told (among more than 50 productions for every major theatre in town), the 2009 recipient of SpeakEasy’s Outstanding Artist Award and winner of three Elliot Norton Awards, two IRNE Awards, and the 2011 Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence has returned for the SpeakEasy’s production of the award-winning drama “Other Desert Cities,” which runs through February 9, 2013.
    “Desert” is the story of a promising novelist who returns home after many years away to announce to her family that her next book will include a recount of an uncomfortable episode in their lives. As often happens with family reunions, things do not go all that well.Written by Jon Robin Baitz, who may be best known as the creator of the ABC television series “Brothers & Sisters,” “Desert” was staged at Lincoln Center and then on Broadway in productions that included Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach, Linda Lavin and later Rachel Griffiths and Judith Light. After being named Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle, the play received five 2012 Tony Award nominations, including Best Play. The story was also a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

        With all these awards and recognition, it may be daunting for any director, no matter how talented and practiced, to take it on. For Edmiston, who teaches dramatic literature and serves as Director of the Office of the Arts at Brandeis University and who always applies his academic research skills and dramatic proclivities to each project he undertakes, it is just another family reunion gone awry.

     “[Desert] is the story of a woman…who writes a memoir about her family and wants their approval before publishing it,” Explains Edmiston. “She's a liberal and her father was the former chair of the GOP.  So, look out!”Despite the heavy family drama, Edmiston saw a sense of humor in the story that attracted him and helped him emphasize the comedy in this family drama. “I [also] love the play’s ethical questions,” he says, “and the emotional viciousness of the characters.”As he and Baitz are of similar age and interests and as he also worked directly with Baitz for an area production of Baitz’ “A Fair Country,”

    Edmiston feels that he has a profound understanding of the playwright and the play. “I understand his cultural frame of reference,” Edmiston suggests. “He’s smart, moral, ambitious, imperfect, droll, sensitive, Jewish, gay, dangerous... basically all of my favorite qualities in an artist.”

 When asked to explain the title of the play, Edmiston explains that it is set in the “surreal” city of Palm Springs and that, on the way to that “artificial” oasis, there is actually a sign that directs you either to Palm Springs or to “other desert cities.”

     “It’s the road not taken,” Edmiston observes, noting that, as the play takes place just after the fall of Bagdhad, the title takes on a clever second meaning. Though the book could end up taking down some key members of the Republican party, Edmiston admits that, especially as we are currently facing another era of Democrat-led malaise, the Reagan era still holds some romance for many. “There was something romantic, wholesome, and deceptive about Reagan’s vision of ‘Morning in America’ that was appealing to many people,” Edmiston suggests.And while the play is political, Edmiston assures that “it is not preachy.”

     “The liberal and conservative values of the characters are embedded into their love-hate relationships with one another,” he says, suggesting that the play is like a cross between “Arrested Development” and “Meet the Press.” Sadly, just as is the case with members of Congress today, the members of this family would rather lose all than compromise. “Can we ever repair that divide?” Edmiston asks, suggesting that the play presents the same question. Despite the problems with her family and the larger divides it draws from, echoes and feeds, the protagonist still hopes to proceed with her publication. For this, Edmiston says, she is to be admired. “Any person who wants to tell the truth and dares to confront the disapproval of one’s family is, to me, heroic,” Edmiston explains. “I love a rebel!” 

Up Wed.-Sun. Check website below for times. Tickets start at $25, with discounts for students, seniors and persons age 25 and under.

 - Matt Robinson

527 Tremont Street, Boston  617-933-8600  www.SpeakEasyStage.com.