If you’ve been lucky enough to see “Other Desert Cities” in its two incarnations — at Lincoln Center a few months ago and now on Broadway — you’ve played the casting game. As in: Who’s better as Brooke, the daughter who puts the family crisis in motion? Looking at the other reviews, I seem to be in the minority to slightly prefer the first Brooke, Elizabeth Marvel (click here for my review). Close contest, though.
In the Lincoln Center version, Marvel’s brittle, hard-edged Brooke was definitely her mother’s daughter. There was a natural connection between Stockard Channing’s tough-as-nails matriarch, Polly, and Brooke. These two may have been loathed to admit it, but they were cut from the same cloth.
Griffiths is softer, more traditionally flirtatious — and she clearly is her daddy’s girl. Her father, Lyman (Stacy Keach), used to be an actor; the two share a certain gift for seducing people, even if this Brooke would never acknowledge that it’s how she operates.
The other switch in casting is Judith Light, now in for Linda Lavin as Polly’s lush of a sister, Silda. Again, I slightly preferred Lavin, but I readily admit that Light brings another dimension to Silda — more fragile, more vulnerable.