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Sharp dialogue delivered by a quintet of superb actors enlivens Other Desert Cities, Jon Robin Baitz’s entertaining if ultimately overly familiar dysfunctional family drama. Director Joe Mantello’s superb staging of this work about a California clan squabbling over the revelation of family secrets makes the play feel weightier than it actually is, but there’s no denying the sheer proficiency of this world premiere Lincoln Center Theater production that is already being buzzed about for a Broadway transfer.

The play is largely set during Christmastime in 2004 in the lush Palm Springs home (beautifully rendered in John Lee Beatty’s creamy set design) of solid Republicans Lyman (Stacy Keach) and Polly Wyeth (Stockard Channing). Lyman, a former well-known actor, eventually parlayed his fame into an ambassadorship during the Reagan administration, but is now happily retired.

Joining them for the holidays are Polly’s sharp-tongued, alcoholic sister Silda (Linda Lavin), fresh out of rehab; apolitical son Trip (Thomas Sadowski), who created a hot new television reality show; and liberal daughter Brooke (Elizabeth Marvel), a New York City-based writer—dressed all in black, natch—with a successful novel to her credit.

What starts out as a jolly reunion quickly turns heated when Brooke reveals the details of her latest book, which is shortly to appear in serialized form in the New Yorker. It tells the story of her brother, who apparently committed suicide decades earlier after being involved in a domestic terrorism bombing which claimed the life of an innocent victim.

Needless to say, her parents, who have become established figures on the Republican scene, are horrified to learn of her plans to bring this sordid incident from their past back to public consciousness. The arguments are soon flowing in fast and furious fashion, leavened by generous doses of sharp humor and ultimately resulting in a dramatic revelation that upends Brooke’s assumptions about what transpired.

Playwright Baitz (The Substance of Fire, A Fair Country)  who in recent years created and shepherded the not dissimilar television series Brothers & Sisters, concentrates more on the domestic than the political aspects of the conflict, with mainly predictable results. And the eventual shift from comedy to melodrama is handled in less than artful fashion.

But he’s also created sympathetic, complex characters who largely defy our expectations, with the result that the play is consistently engrossing nonetheless. The five performers play their roles to perfection, providing superb texture not only to their delivery of the crackling dialogue but also using perfectly modulated body language to excellent effect.

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. www.lct.org.

Don’t expect a respite from the frosty temperatures at the superb production of John Gabriel Borkman being presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. From the mounds of snow dotting the bleak set to its chilly emotional climate, Ibsen’s 19th century classic doesn’t exactly provide much in the way of warmth.

What it does possess, thanks to the Bernie Madoff scandal, is a newfound immediacy. The title character, played with haughty grandeur by Alan Rickman, is a financier who went to prison for five years for embezzling his investors’ money. Now he lives in disgrace and rarely ventures from the upper floor of his house, with his relationships with his resentful wife Gunhild (Fiona Shaw) and grown son Erhart (Marty Rea) in tatters.

The arrival of his wife’s twin sister Ella (Lindsay Duncan, Rickman’s co-star in both Les Liaisons Dangereuse and Private Lives) creates even more tension in the troubled household. It seems that Ella, who was John’s lover before he married her sister, wants her nephew to come live with her. Gunhild, convinced that only he is only capable of restoring honor to the family name, bitterly resents the request.

The resulting collision among these figures forms the heart of the drama, which memorably ends in a climactic scene taking place in the midst of a fierce blizzard that is evocatively evoked in this masterful staging by James Macdonald that was imported from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.

While the play itself has its definite longeurs, it is rendered here with shattering results thanks to the brilliant performances by the three leads. Rickman, using his sonorous voice to great effect, subtly conveys the stubborn pride of a man who refuses to admit he did anything wrong. His performance contrasts beautifully with those Shaw, constantly teetering on the edge of hysteria as the wronged wife, and Duncan, deeply moving as the self-assured Ella who is harboring a dark secret.

Once again, the invaluable Brooklyn Academy of Music is to be commended for bringing to these shores yet another superb foreign production that would otherwise require an overseas flight to experience. One can hardly wait for the upcoming King Lear starring Derek Jacobi that is being imported from London’s Donmar Warehouse.

Brooklyn Academy of Music, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. www.BAM.org.

It’s safe to say that there hasn’t been a Lady Bracknell quite as haughtily imperious as Brian Bedford’s in the pitch-perfect new production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Playing the grand dame who looks at her daughter Gwendolyn’s prospective suitor in frighteningly disapproving manner, this estimable classical actor demonstrates that the correct gender is absolutely not required to play this formidable dowager.

Bedford, who previously essayed the role in an acclaimed Stratford Shakespeare Festival production two years, not only steals the show, but has also expertly staged this pitch-perfect Broadway production of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 classic being presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

He’s aided by a sterling supporting cast, including the amusing Santino Fontana and David Furr as Algernon and John, the two young men who learn the titular lesson in their romantic pursuits; the charming Sara Topham and Charlotte Parry as Gwendolen and Cecily, their respective beloveds; and seasoned veterans Dana Ivey and Paxton Whitehead as Cecily’s prim governess Miss Prism and the starchy Rev. Chasuble.

Performing on Desmond Heeley’s sumptuous sets (and clad in his elegant costumes as well), the ensemble deliver Wilde’s subversively witty comedy of manners in grand style, thankfully avoiding the excessive campiness that permeates so many mediocre productions.

For regular theatergoers, Wilde’s play is by now all too familiar. But although one can nearly recite its dialogue by heart, it’s always a pleasure to hear his classic bon mots delivered with impeccable drollness and comic timing.

One priceless example: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune,” Bedford’s Lady Bracknell pronounces. “To lose both looks like carelessness.”  

But clearly the raison d’etre of this production is to showcase Bedford’s star turn, and he doesn’t disappoint. The actor underplays beautifully, never bothering to appear particularly feminine and delivering every witticism in the driest manner possible. He can score more laughs with a simple raised eyebrow or disapproving glance than most actors manage with reams of dialogue. Making a far too rare appearance on Broadway—he has spent the last 27 years regularly performing up in Canada—his performance alone makes attendance mandatory.

American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org. 

Just in case you somehow fail to realize that the blue-collar family at the center of Blood from a Stone is falling apart, the set designed by Derek McLane periodically alerts you. Several times during the course of this new work by first time playwright Tommy Nohilly, rainwater crashes through the rotting panels of the kitchen’s ceiling. It’s one of the all too many obvious devices in this overlong, kitchen sink drama being presented by the New Group.

Ethan Hawke, in full grunge mode, plays the central character of Travis, a pill-popping ex-Marine who has dropped by his Connecticut family home en route to a new life out west. He doesn’t exactly encounter domestic bliss: his mother Margaret (Ann Dowd) and abusive father Bill (Gordon Clapp) are at each other’s throats, and brother Matt (Thomas Guiry) is clearly in serious financial and possibly criminal trouble.

Watching these troubled characters ferociously battle with each other for two-and-a-half hours might have been interesting if any of them had something interesting to say. But despite the endless profusion of profanities and insults hurled about, this dysfunctional family drama clearly influenced by Sam Shepard fails to provide the sort of rich characterizations or situations that would make us care.

Inexplicably wasted are the terrific Natasha Lyonne and Daphne Rubin-Vega, who show up for brief, inconsequential scenes as Travis’ relatively sane sister and his married but sex-starved ex-girlfriend respectively.

Under the vivid, detailed direction of Scott Elliott, the performers do manage to provide fully lived-in characterizations. Clapp, in a role far removed from his mousy detective on TV’s NYPD Blue, is formidable as the fiery paterfamilias; Dowd projects vulnerability and fierceness in equal amounts; Guiry well conveys the insidious charm of the huckster brother and Hawke centers the proceedings by essentially playing straight man as he passively reacts to the surrounding chaos.

Acorn Theater, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. www.telecharge.com.  

The concept of illness as metaphor has long been a fertile area for playwrights, the latest example being Obie Award-winner Adam Bock’s (The Receptionist, The Thugs) A Small Fire at Playwrights Horizons. Tracking the physical disintegration of a vibrant woman who loses her senses one by one, the drama fails to capitalize on its provocative premise.

Emily (Michelle Pawk) is a successful contractor whose professional competence is indicated by her easygoing rapport with her burly foreman Billy (Victor Williams). But she seems less than satisfied in her marriage to the mild-mannered John (Reed Birney), and her relationship with her grown daughter Jenny (Celia Keenan-Bolger) is fraught with tension.

The trouble begins when Emily nearly starts a fire because she’s unable to smell a burning towel. It soon becomes apparent that she’s lost her sense of smell. This is quickly followed by the succeeding losses of taste, sight and hearing. Before long she’s reduced to sitting forlornly on her couch, still able to speak while others can communicate to her only via squeezing her hand.

The problem with the play is that Bock provides neither the texture for it to succeed as naturalism nor the poeticism to infuse his central character’s plight with sufficient resonance. Although there are moments that are quietly moving—such as when Emily informs her devoted husband, “I didn’t love you…but I love you now”—for most of the brief, 80 minute running time it feels like a mundane domestic drama that has been artificially inflated with its high-concept mysterious illness.

Under the direction of Trip Cullman, the excellent ensemble delivers sensitive portrayals that help flesh out their thinly written characters. Pawk is so charismatic in her early scenes that her character’s progressive deterioration becomes deeply tragic. Birney is very touching as the pained husband who discovers his inner strength; Keenan-Bolger well suggests the complexity in the prickly daughter who tries to provide her mother with loving support; and Williams is wonderfully natural as the good-natured Billy.

Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com.