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Theatre listings >
The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie
- based on Muriel Spark's novel of the same name.
Adaptor for the stage - Jay Presson Allan. (This adaptation first
performed in 1966.)
Director - Muriel Romanes.
Designer - Bunny Christie
Costume Designer - Shirley Robinson
Lighting Designer - Chris Davey
Company - Royal Lyceum Theatre Company - Rest
of creative team and cast see end of review
Opening Venue - Royal Lyceum Theatre
www.lyceum.org.uk for on line booking
0131 248 4848 Grindlay St off Lothian Rd to left of Usher Hall
Dates - 11 Jan - 8 Feb 2003 Tuesday - Saturday at 7.45pm
Matinees Wednesdays 15, 22 & 29 January; Saturdays 18 & 25 January
and 1 & 8 February; and Sunday 26 January at 2.30pm.FREE PREVIEW 10
January at 7.45pm (Queue on the night - tickets not issued in advance)
Tour Venue Dates and Times - here
Seen to review at Royal Lyceum Edinburgh
Run Time - 2hours 20 mins including 20 mins interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Acute and tight, full of telling detail.
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie - Royal Lyceum Production
Mr Lowther, Peter Kelly, Sandy Clare Yuille, Monica
Frances Thorburn, Jean Brodie Siobhan Redmond, Jenny
Susan Coyle and Mary McGregor Nicola Jo Cully.
© Marc Marnie 2003
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I've seen The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie before, both Allan's play and
also film adaptations, but never so strong and intelligently realised.
Siobhan Redmond's Brodie strides and flirts her way as an educator
and inspirer of young minds. She's a flawed misled person describing Hitler's
1930's followers as naughty while Mussolini is extolled as a leader who
has removed litter as well as the unemployed from the streets of Italy.
Indeed some would welcome him in Edinburgh today.
For seen in 2003, her view of her own time seems less foolhardy and misguided
than it did in the Royal Lyceum 1968 production, their 80's production,
or the recent National Theatre's touring one with Fiona Shaw.
Holding back from the histrionics and melodrama this role often unfortunately
brings out, Redmond skilfully delivers a more real Brodie. One
struggling to live a single woman's life as she leads the young by her
delight of learning and disclosing what an educated woman might do. She's
not a team player as her Headmistress Miss Mackay, Alexandra Mathie,
says in an early example of management speak, but this play sheds equal
light on the murky dealings to keep the human herd docile and the mavericks
reined in.
Muriel Romanes' direction is acute and tight, full of telling detail.
The girls, the Brodie set sprawling giggling in the cloakroom, their faces
exposed to the emotions of La Traviata in performance, and the lost pupil
dressed as an angel looking for the nativity play as Brodie and Mr Lowther,
a superbly weedy performance by Peter Kelly, try to sort out their
lives. The other male in the school, the one armed Mr Lloyd is made sensually
Celtic with Welsh undertones by Kevin McMonagle. It's easy to sense
the all-girls' school seething with hormones and frissons of delight and
how, pre the pill and permissiveness, sexual feelings were heady indeed
for women who yearned to be fullfilled. Irene Allan gives interesting
contrasting characters as the snoopy Miss Gaunt and the two younger teachers
- her dance class is a particular delight.
Sandy, Clare Yuille, transforming from ugly duckling to draped
model is one of Brodie's set, along with Monica, Frances Thorburn,
Jenny, Susan Coyle and as Mary McGregor, Nicola Jo Cully,
we watch them as they grow up. Each changes, still under the spell of
the teacher they first encountered at the top end of primary. Nowadays,
in our "Safety First" culture poor Miss Mackay strove for, that
motto visible to us in her study, it would be hard for a teacher to associate
with schoolgirls as Brodie did. One of the subversive strengths of this
production is that we don't laugh at or mock Brodie. Romanes has recognized
this is too cheap and glib an interpretation. Here we have to acknowledge
there's a passionate Brodie lurking in us all, as well as a measurement
driven Miss Mackay, and neither are wholly demons or saints.
Using 22 gymslipped young women and girls mainly from the Royal Lyceum's
own Youth Theatre, Directors Romanes and Colin Brodie with choreographer
Jane Howie make sure the life of a private girls school spills across
the stage giving us dancing classes, singing lessons and even a bubbling
chemistry lab of smells and bangs. This last suggesting, probably with
some justification, that the progressive school that Headmistress Miss
MacKay fears is a fictitious version of the real St Trinnians* and its
enlightened Headmistress Miss Catherine Fraser Lee. Edinburgh's contradicitions
visible to this day are sparklingly reflected in this play, as in the
original novel. Oh how we have long struggled with creativity and control,
wealth and poverty and so Edinburgh - how to behave.
Designer Bunny Christie's set has well judged perspectives with school
room doors down the sides and tiny school chairs across the front. It
draws the audience powerfully into the dynamic spaces of the play. Individual
scenes quickly change with picture frames flying in and out while schoolgirls
surge in and out of lessons. Chris Davey's lighting gives us Edinburgh
grey as well as a rare day of apricot light in Cramond.
Untill last Saturday I've always felt productions and certainly the film
didn't quite get the Jean Brodie of the book. With this very strong team
and, can I say, creme de la creme cast the complexities of the story really
come out, making us see and hear the dramatised story anew. With the recent
rise of the right in Europe, our increasingly over monitored education
and lives and now our mobilised military forces Brodie's Edinburgh feels
startlingly and troublingly close.
© Thelma Good 11 January 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
* The artist and writer Ronald Searle was inspired by tales of two St
Trinneans girls to write his St Trinians' stories. Muriel Spark's story
came from her own schooldays at James Gillespie's School for Girls and
Miss Kay an inspirational teacher.
Rest of creative Team and Cast:
Assistant Director - Rosie Kellagher.
Young People's Director - Colin Bradie.
Musical Director - Hilary Brooks
CAST
Jean Brodie Siobhan Redmond
Sandy Stranger Clare Yuille
Teddy Lloyd Kevin McMonagle
Gordon Lowther Peter Kelly
Miss Mackay Alexandra Mathie
Monica Douglas Frances Thorburn
Jenny Shaw Susan Coyle
Mary McGregor Nicola Jo Cully
Miss Gaunt/Miss Campbell/Miss Lockhart Irene Alien
Schoolgirls
Laurie Anderson, Lucy Armes, Emma Ballantine, Elizabeth Brotherston, Jessica
Chalmers, Daisy Chute, Hazel Darwin Edwards, Jessica Dewar, Helena du
Toil, Kim Gerard, Jennifer Gowans, Amy Leach, Sinead Leach, Ailidh
Mackay, Kirsty Mackay, Emily Nicholl MacPhail, Jessica Morton, Gayle Rankin,
Frances Ross, Gemma Stroyan, Gillian Taylor, and Lesley Ann Turner.
Royal Lyceum Theatre's production of The Prime
of Miss Jean Brodie tours only to Glasgow's Theatre Royal 282
Hope Street near RSAMD
Glasgow Dates 11 Feb - 15 Feb at 7:15pm Mat on 13 Feb at 1:30pm
and 15 Feb at 2:15pm
Book for Glasgow dates on www.theatreroyalglasgow.com
or 0141 332 9000
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