Best of Broadway in 2011

The dysfunction of the Reagan family often seemed at odds with its patriarch's sunny conservatism. And in this potent familial drama, Jon Robin Baitz shifted that apparent disconnect to a fictional West Coast political family, with one secretive generation now retired in the desert and its offspring ready to spill a variety of family secrets as a form of neurotic self-actualization. In some ways, "Other Desert Cities" is no more than a very shrewd bourgeois play, the kind that attracts the audience that can actually afford Broadway prices. But this superbly acted production, directed by Joe Mantello, went much deeper than that, probing generational disconnect, geographic incompatibility, the validity of using your loved ones for artistic fodder and the death of old-fashioned discretion.

At the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St.; telecharge.com