The CHARM of Miss Jean Brodie
PaST productions of Muriel Spark’s Scottish schoolma’am story The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie have often been tinged by sepia nostalgia. You could practically taste the coal smoke in that oatcakey Edinburgh air.
But the Donmar warehouse’s new version, haunted by tinkling, tolling bells on a minimalist set, pares back any sense of period and place — not totally, but enough to make us savour more the universal qualities of Miss Brodie’s dangerous rebelliousness.
here is a schoolmistress who encourages her wards to regard authority with scepticism. They relish her company. They drink sherry at her flat. They acquire a team spirit.
Yet they do not necessarily benefit from it all, long-term; hence a slightly depressing, yet watchable, evening.
Lia williams, as Miss Brodie, is a skittish, fragile, unpredictable figure.
She dresses in scarlet and clasps her slender physique as she recounts holiday trips to Thirties Italy.
Miss Brodie, despite her romantic streak, has a weakness for Mussolini and fascism. Those political inclinations are hard to believe — a casualty of director Polly Findlay’s decision to glamorise her central figure.
a strong cast Sylvestra Le Touzel, excellent as overbearing headmistress Miss Mackay, Edward MacLiam as the dashing art master Mr Lloyd and angus wright as Lowther, the decent, but dull, music teacher who hopes to marry Miss Brodie. I am an admirer of Mr wright. Few are better at conveying emotional constipation. Then there is the quintet of girls who are in Miss Brodie’s class. Director Findlay has done well to find adult actresses who are so believable as teenagers. Lizzie Clachan’s set gives us a bland, grey school corridor which could almost be the wall of a crematorium. although the accents are Scots, little else locates the story. we must therefore confront the timelessness of a story which shows how all of us, at some point, must break free from our formative influences.
There comes a moment our childhood heroes will be stripped bare. and for teachers the sad truth that the more independent you encourage your pupils to be, the quicker they will desert you.
n DESPITE a gluey end — some of which could be dropped —
Monogamy is a good show which deserves a wider audience.
at North London’s Park Theatre, playwright Torben Betts had a promising idea: a play about a TV celebrity chef whose family life is a good deal less idyllic than viewers might guess from her perfect kitchen and her zingy smile and her wholesome ingredients.
Caroline Mortimer (Janie Dee) is ‘the nation’s second-favourite TV cook’, but once the cameras have stopped rolling she hits the bottle and has to come to terms with a neurotic, spoilt son and a chauvinistic, neglectful husband.
Monogamy is an uncertain affair. Is it ayckbourn- style comedy, farce or something more surreal and political? It might be a lot more convincing and funny if it concentrated on Caroline’s character and showed us more of her falseness in front of the TV cameras. For a play about a highprofile cook, there is remarkably little about food in this play.
Some aspects of the plot are glaringly inauthentic — Caroline’s alleged religious fervour, for instance, and the pampered son’s intention to run away to fight for jihadis in Syria.
The comedy simmers, but never threatens to boil over. Patrick Ryecart probably overdoes things as the husband and Genevieve Gaunt shoots way over the top, though not in an entirely bad way, as Caroline’s coke- snorting assistant. Former EastEnders actress Charlie Brooks appears as a wronged wife who also hits the sauce.
It relies on the comedy of unravelling disaster. Some love that sort of thing. I often find it hard to watch. But Janie Dee is never less than likeable.