A decade and a half after it first appeared in New York, Other Desert Cities shows its age in a buzzy Broadway revival at the Hudson Theatre. A major issue here is the frozen-in-amber quality of Jon Robin Baitz’s script: set on Christmas Eve 2004, its references to the George W. Bush administration, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and weapons of mass destruction seem positively quaint today.

But there are other, more detrimental throwback characteristics on display. Baitz works in the model of the well-made play, but in doing so, he delivers something that feels a bit too manicured. The audience can see the bombshells coming a mile away. When Brooke Wyeth (Lily Rabe) returns to her family home in Palm Springs after an absence of six years, bearing a book she’s written that re-litigates a painful past tragedy, we already sense it won’t be well received.

We can tell too that her parents — Lyman (Ed Harris), an actor turned conservative politician, and Polly (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a society matron in the Betsy Bloomingdale mode — are hiding something beneath their impenetrable Republican façades. Other Desert Cities features a second-act twist that can be seen from space, but the wheels spin a bit too aimlessly in getting there.

It’s hard not to interpret this play as bargain-counter Edward Albee with an appliquéd-layer of California cool. Throw in an alcoholic sister (Silda Grauman, played by Allison Janney) and you practically have A Delicate Balance, West Coast edition. The looming specter of Henry, the family’s long-dead son, a surfer boy cum 70s radical, evokes the pain points of Virginia Woolf and Three Tall Women. Baitz’s writing, however, often lacks the sophistication that Albee can deliver even at his most exasperating.

Instead, we get name-dropping: Polly warmly recalls Ronnie and Nancy, the latter of whom she describes as “like a big sister to me,” and scornfully evokes “your friend Ms. Didion” to her daughter. References to Pat Buckley, Paul Bowles, and Loehmann’s department store also abound. As directed by the actor John Benjamin Hickey, the pacing often feels closer to the breathless comedy of a farce than the slow-burning revelations of a dysfunctional-family drama.

We also get the familiar trope of the mentally and emotionally fragile adult child, with Brooke having spent much of the recent past in and out of psychiatric hospitals. The Wyeths’ youngest son Trip, played with a touch too much flippancy by Joe Keery, stands in as the seemingly implacable scion whose relaxed exterior hides deep, choppy waters.

The original production, directed by Joe Mantello, had star power going for it. This revival only has stars. Hickey’s staging lacks a center of gravity, leaving the fine performers unmoored, their characters unrealized. In her Broadway debut, Louis-Dreyfus perhaps suffers the most. So many elements of her Polly work when taken on her own — her mordant humor, her icy stare — but they don’t cohere into a fully realized performance. She lacks the character’s ruthless need for self-preservation.

Harris seems uncomfortable in his presentation of Lyman as a macho man of the Hollywood old guard, which is surprising for someone who spent most of his career as a genuine movie star. Rabe does fine work as Brooke, particularly in quieter moments, but she has a tendency toward the overwrought. Janney relishes the comedic beats inherent in the writing for Silda, but she doesn’t add much depth to an underwritten role.

The physical production also looks surprisingly cheap, with Scott Pask’s set resembling less an elegant Palm Desert abode than the reception area of a Travelodge. Tom Broecker’s costumes seem to span periods without much thought to cohesiveness. Interstitial music by Mikaal Sulaiman underscores the family tension a touch too obviously.

The maxim still holds true that each unhappy family wallows in its own particular brand of misery, and here, the Wyeths reach beneath the shellacked surface to excavate their personal tragedies. But this production lacks the depth to truly make the audience feel the pain that nearly tears them apart.

Through Jan. 17, 2027, at the Hudson Theatre