Julia Louis-Dreyfus is on Broadway for the first time, playing Polly Wyeth in Other Desert Cities at the Hudson Theatre. The production is in previews now and is set to open on October 18.
For an 11-time Emmy winner whose career has been built on television, the move is a clean break into a different kind of stage spotlight. The revival also brings together Ed Harris as Lyman Wyeth, Allison Janney as Silda Grauman, Joe Keery as Trip Wyeth and Lily Rabe as Brooke Wyeth, giving the play a cast built to draw attention before a critic has filed a review.
That is part of the reason the date matters. Other Desert Cities was first seen Off-Broadway through Lincoln Center Theater in 2011 before transferring to Broadway later that year, and it went on to become a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A new production of a play with that history does not arrive as a blank slate; it arrives with memory, expectation and a built-in argument about whether a revival can find something fresh inside familiar material.
The company around the cast is designed for the same effect. Scott Pask handles scenic design, Tom Broecker costume design, Natasha Katz lighting, Mikaal Sulaiman sound design and original music, and Robert Pickens hair and wig design, while ATG Productions, Bad Robot Live, Gavin Kalin Productions, Kristin Caskey, Bee Carrozzini and Mike Isaacson are producing. Samuel Dallas of Envoy Theatricals is serving as general manager, and Joy Sims is company manager.
The friction is built into the calendar. The production is already in previews, which means the work is being tested in front of audiences before the official opening night, but the judgment day for the revival is still ahead on October 18. That gives Louis-Dreyfus and the rest of the cast a short run of public rehearsal before the production becomes the version everyone else is asked to measure.
What happens next is simple: the previews continue, the opening night comes, and Louis-Dreyfus finds out whether her first Broadway role lands as more than a celebrity arrival. If it does, Other Desert Cities will be remembered as the moment a television star became a Broadway player on the first try.
