Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (w/ Cynthia Nixon) reviews

Hmm..interesting.

I'm actually very interested in seeing this show.

Does it offer student rush or standing room?

I may be the only person not surprised. I seemed to be the single dissenting voice here when she was announced.

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Have you seen the production, Margo?

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Not yet. Because of my trepidations about Nixon, it's not been at the top of my "to see" list, though I'll probably get around to it at some point. Not to mention, I'm already seeing over a dozen other shows this month and there just isn't time.

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Brantley also thinks she's miscast:

"Who wouldn’t trust their children with Cynthia Nixon? Even playing bad girls and basket cases, this wonderful actress projects a brisk aura of competence, good will and empathy, leavened by an eminently sane sense of proportion. I have never seen her give an emotionally dishonest performance.

These are sterling virtues all — and all at odds with the role of one of the theater’s most charismatic warpers of young minds. That’s Jean Brodie, the dramatically self-deluding Scottish schoolteacher and passionate advocate of causes — like sexual freedom and Italian Fascism — generally deemed unsuitable for little girls of the 1930’s.

In the New Group’s slow, airless revival of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” the 1966 play adapted by Jay Presson Allen from Muriel Spark’s short novel of 1961, Ms. Nixon cuts the dangerous Miss Brodie down to size, creating a portrait of a vulnerable, accessible woman who may, after all, be more sinned against than sinning.

While this unlikely interpretation of the role is probably not entirely intentional, it could be argued (by a generous and elastic mind) that the drama supports the notion of a life-sized Miss Brodie, who is described in retrospect by the canniest of her pupils as “both guilty and innocent.”

But without a large-scale Jean Brodie casting giant, violet-hued shadows over her classroom, the play itself seems to shrink, stiffen and show its age. As staged by Scott Elliott, a director known for eliciting (or forcing) the perversity in chestnuts as conventional as “Present Laughter” and “The Women,” the straightforward production that opened last night at the Acorn Theater curiously only underscores the schematic stodginess of Ms. Allen’s script.
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Yet shortly after Ms. Nixon strides onto Derek McLane’s classic schoolroom set, looking very comely in crimped hair and a snug orange dress (the costumes are by Eric Becker), your doubts begin. True, there’s promise in her sly, confident smile, which suggests she is listening to privileged information no one else can hear.

But her pinched Scottish accent forces her voice into uncomfortably nasal upper registers that suggest Miss Brodie could be Minnie Mouse’s cousin from Edinburgh. It is not a voice to inspire girls to romantic reverie. The overall effect is more coquettish, even girlish, than passionate. Miss Brodie’s essential air of defiant superiority seems merely provisional, which is all too evident when she loses her cool in argument with other adults.
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Ms. Nixon, of course, is a master of emotional transparency. It’s what made her performance in David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole,” for which she won a Tony Award this year, so ravishing. Her great gift is for discovering extraordinary depth and detail in ordinary lives. That Miss Brodie bolts at the slightest suggestion of the ordinary leaves Ms. Nixon, for once, in limbo in finding the path to her character.


http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/theater/reviews/10brod.html?ref=theater

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I am so disappointed- just this morning my sister announced that she bought tickets for us to go in November... I hope its worth it! Any good reviews??

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I first heard the rumor that the New Group was preparing Brodie for Nixon about a year ago and I shook my head at the news. There are hundreds of plays that Nixon would be wonderful in so why they chose this one for her is a complete mystery to me. And every review so far is confirming my initial concerns.

I've seen her in more than a half dozen plays over the years and nothing I've ever seen her do led me to believe that she had this character in her somewhere. Beyond the Scottish accent, it requires a highly mannered, affected presentational style of acting that is almost the opposite of everything that she does so well and is more the provence of folks like Dames Maggie, Judi, Joan Plowright and the Redgraves and a handful of older American actresses like Elizabeth Ashley, Marian Seldes or Kathleen Turner (I frankly can't think of a current 40-ish actress who would be right for the role). For the character and the humor in the play to work (and the play itself is a rather moldy, sluggish piece that really begs for a star turn in the lead), you need a true scenery-chewer and that's just not Nixon.

We'll see if other reviews pop up with a differing opinion than these, but I imagine that we'll see more of the same tomorrow.

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Updated On: 10/9/06 at 11:58 PM

NY Sun is Mixed:

"To theater buffs, the thought of 2006 Tony winner Cynthia Nixon playing the dangerous Miss Jean Brodie — a role made famous by the likes of Maggie Smith, Vanessa Redgrave, and Zoe Caldwell — was pure catnip. So it is with some disappointment that I report the New Group's revival of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," which opened Monday, is merely a very competent one.

The normally fleet-footed Ms. Nixon, struggling under the weight of an uncomfortable Scottish brogue, never fully disappears inside the incomparable Miss Brodie. And though she's undeniably magnetic, Ms. Nixon seems too contemporary a figure to belong to a 1930s Edinburgh girls' school.But if Scott Elliott's efficient production doesn't dazzle, neither does it bore; we hang on the every word of its two lionhearted heroines."

http://www.nysun.com/article/41207

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Many of us here opined that she was miscast. It's a fascinating case of a director/company truly believing a radically different take would reveal new colors in the material -- somehow, a straightforward, less 'theatrical' Jean might deconstruct the character.

In a way, it's what was attempted in casting John C. Riley in STREETCAR. There was a belief that a less traditional Stanley would be a bold take, and exorcise ghosts of Brando and all who followed in his footsteps. The reception was similar to this.

But: The difference, to my thinking: Streetcar is a pas de deux, or a quartet, to be more fair. So much of it is in Blanche's hands, and the Richardson Blanche was decidedly in the traditional vein, to my thinking, brilliantly so. But BRODIE requires someone in the driver's seat who can create ... well, fire and music.

By the way: Wouldn't Natasha be a decent Brodie?

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Well, what about me as a dissenting voice on the casting?
(sniff sniff sob) Of all things for her to do... Maybe Summer and Smoke would have been better.

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So I saw this production a couple of weeks ago. I knew nothing about the play/story, went in cold.

I know a lot of these reviews because it is a revival refers more to the production than the show itself, but I just wanted to say that I really loved the show. It surprised me, and seeemed unique. Often the new, liberal, non-conservative teacher is like the inspirational heroine, so to take Brodie down this path was fascinating. I kept going back and forth in how I felt about her but then at the end and it kind of hit me and I was like ohh.

I thought Cynthia was fine, though I have nothing to compare her to. But I do wonder just from what I'm reading from the reviews...were you supposed to feel ambiguous to her for most of the show, at least the first act? Because I did...I actually liked Brodie even at the end of the first act. It wasn't until the second act that I saw her true nature. Is that the reaction one in the audience is supposed to have, or with someone playing it...flashier, is her nature more clear from the beginning?

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