Nathan Weinbender

Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities” belongs to that particular breed of domestic drama that traps us in a room with characters who are all at emotional and ideological odds and watches as they slowly destroy one another. It’s also a perceptive and painful familial portrait, tightly wound and intense, and it’s brilliantly and compassionately acted by the five-person cast at the Modern Theater Spokane.

The less you know about Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities” walking in, the better. The play, which opens at the Modern Theater Spokane tonight, is an intimate character drama about splintered family dynamics and old wounds being reopened, and its story takes off in unexpected directions. “It’s a beautifully crafted script, and it unfolds in a very heart-wrenching way,” said the show’s director, Dawn Taylor Reinhardt. “If people have not read it, then it will unfold exactly as it needs to unfold.”

The less you know about Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities” walking in, the better. The play, which opens at the Modern Theater Spokane tonight, is an intimate character drama about splintered family dynamics and old wounds being reopened, and its story takes off in unexpected directions. “It’s a beautifully crafted script, and it unfolds in a very heart-wrenching way,” said the show’s director, Dawn Taylor Reinhardt. “If people have not read it, then it will unfold exactly as it needs to unfold.”

Frank Abagnale Jr.’s story is one of thinly constructed veneers, of mistaken identities, of running and running and never quite getting anywhere. He was a seasoned con man by his early 20s, successfully posing as a Pan Am pilot, a pediatrician and an attorney before the FBI caught him in 1969. Abagnale’s story is also an endlessly fascinating one – it seems impossible that he could have evaded capture for so long – and he detailed it himself in the 1980 book “Catch Me If You Can,” which was later turned into a 2002 Steven Spielberg film. Abagnale has since admitted that large swaths of the book were exaggerated for dramatic impact, and that his co-writer Stan Redding was more concerned with constructing a compelling narrative than getting all the facts straight. That seems perfectly appropriate.

Summer may be more or less over, but the coming week is one of the busiest in recent memory. There’s so much going on, in fact, that there’s no possible way to catch everything, and we simply don’t have the room to write extensively about all of it. So here’s a quick wrap-up of some of the big music events happening in the next week, including all the headlining musical acts at the Spokane County Interstate Fair.

Pig Out in the Park, now in its 36th year, has become one of the more bittersweet signposts of the season: It’s still the best annual event specializing in cheap food and free live music, but its occurrence every year signals that summer is about to wane. Browsing the full six-day music lineup, you’ll see some of the names that turn up every year – Too Slim and the Taildraggers, Sammy Eubanks, Men in the Making, Trailer Park Girls – as well as an eclectic mix of local talent, from the Flying Spiders to Quarter Monkey to B-Radicals.