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

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:00pm

Talkin Broadway:

"If all that distinguishes stage acting from film and television acting is the size of the performance, Cynthia Nixon might be an ideal Jean Brodie for the Lifetime network. But in Jay Presson Allen's play The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, adapted from Muriel Spark's novel, if the benignant and coy Scottish schoolteacher Nixon is now playing might perhaps merit an Emmy nomination, it has no place on a stage.

Even in a theater as small as the Acorn at Theatre Row, the emotional colors undoubtedly roiling within Nixon seldom read past the first row. Nixon's Brodie, the Italy-enamored progressive instructor at Edinburgh's Marcia Blaine School for Girls, is a cool and calculating monster who tries to effect her will on her students, her men, and even her audience with sly subterfuge rather than the fiery histrionics usually associated with this star-making role.

Nixon, of course, is already a star, as several seasons of Sex and the City on television and a hefty theatre resume will affirm. So it's perhaps understandable that she and director Scott Elliott would want to bring Brodie more down to Earth: This allows Nixon to put her own unique stamp on a role that's already been interpreted to galvanic, scenery-chewing perfection by actresses like Vanessa Redgrave (in London), Zoe Caldwell (on Broadway), and Maggie Smith (on film). But as Earth is alien territory for Brodie, this was not the wisest choice.
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What does raise an eyebrow or two is that an electric Brodie might well be sharing the stage with Nixon. As the patrician Mackay, Emery gives a gripping performance that makes the headmistress's quest to unseat Brodie the play's true driving concern. Without breaking a sweat and practically without raising her voice, Emery transforms a potentially unsympathetic foil into a charismatic crusader in her own right, one who could believably topple Brodie's regime with our implicit approval.

This is what any Jean Brodie needs, and hopefully Emery will someday have her crack at the role. While she's sadly unlikely to get that chance in New York unless she first stars in a major TV series herself, it's at least comforting to know that the Jean Brodie absent from the Acorn is alive and well and living in her. But if Nixon ever possessed the proper qualities to embody her, this great actress is seemingly past that particular prime.


http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ob/10_09_06.html

[teebz]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:04pm

Hmm..interesting.

I'm actually very interested in seeing this show.

Does it offer student rush or standing room?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:05pm

The AP has similar complaints:

"Jean Brodie is one of those larger-than-life characters favored by actresses who relish expansive emoting.

And, if done right, she can bring a performer prizes. Witness Zoe Caldwell's Tony for playing Brodie on Broadway in the late 1960s, and Maggie Smith's Oscar for portraying this indomitable woman in the movies several years later.

Alas, in the New Group's slow-moving, off-Broadway revival of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Cynthia Nixon shrinks this unique creature, turning Jay Presson Allen's adaptation of the Muriel Spark novel into an uncomfortable tale of an unrepentant, annoying eccentric.

Nixon, a Tony winner last June for her work as a grieving mother in "Rabbit Hole," is a fine actress. Yet her take on this free-spirited teacher in a Scottish girls' school in the 1930s is strident and curiously lacking in conviction.

And conviction is something Brodie has by the bucket full. "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life," Brodie burbles throughout the play as she introduces her youthful charges to art, music, poetry and, what proves to be her downfall, politics.

The no-nonsense Brodie abhors the conventional and the restrictions of a society represented here by the school's female principal, a wonderfully starchy Lisa Emery.

Without a forceful heroine to anchor the production, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" drifts. It doesn't help that Allen's play, which is told in flashback, just sort of peters out, dribbling to an unsatisfactory conclusion that director Scott Elliott can't disguise."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/10/09/entertainment/e134522D26.DTL

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:08pm

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

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:14pm

You and me both Rath. From the moment this was announced, I just couldn't ever get my head around the idea of a wonderful, but internal and naturalistic actor like Nixon, playing the larger-than-life, scenery-chewing Brodie on stage. Of all the roles she could possibly play, her as Brodie never made sense to me (especially considering how many times I've seen Maggie Smith's Oscar-winning performance in the film; I even own the DVD).

If these reviews are typical of what's to come, then I guess my (and your) instincts were right about this casting.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:17pm

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:27pm

More of the same from Variety:

"In a commercial currently airing in New York for an online food-shopping service, a delivery guy says to Cynthia Nixon, "Aren't you the little homemaker?" While Jean Brodie's adoration of all things Italian might make her endorse the actress's choice of recipe (eggplant parmesan), the impassioned educator surely would arch an imperious eyebrow at such a condescending definition. Women, under her tutelage, are encouraged to pursue a dedicated life of great spirit and initiative. The distance between the miscast Nixon and her character is almost as glaring onstage in the New Group's inert revival of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."

Adapted by playwright Jay Presson Allen from Muriel Spark's 1961 novel, Miss Brodie has been a magnet in many incarnations for grande dames of the stage, among them Zoe Caldwell, Vanessa Redgrave, Geraldine McEwan, Fiona Shaw and Maggie Smith, who won an Oscar for the 1968 screen version. Those interpreters share some fundamental characteristics of the flamboyant Edinburgh teacher from the Marcia Blaine School for Girls -- a facility for self-aggrandizing eccentricity; innate pride, poise and authority; and the ability to balance steely determination with vulnerability. Nixon may be capable of generating those qualities, but she fails to summon them here.

On the evidence presented in director Scott Elliott's pedestrian staging, this is a profound mismatch of leading actress and character. Jean Brodie is a larger-than-life Pied Piper who sweeps through the play, trailing the chosen girls of her set behind her like adoring disciples. Her romantic swooning, shameless narcissism, Svengali-like mystique and reckless embrace of political causes -- all in the sometimes muddled service of Goodness, Truth and Beauty -- demand theatrical affectation, not naturalism.

Nixon tends to convey flinty, grounded intelligence, her warmth and humor nestled behind a circumspect veneer. Those qualities were deftly applied in her Tony-winning turn last season in "Rabbit Hole," but they don't fit flawed, fanciful Jean Brodie. Thus it's perhaps unsurprising that Nixon rarely connects with the character, whom she misreads as an excited rather than exciting woman. So much of her energy is channeled into conquering a Scottish brogue, and into maintaining a complicitous, self-satisfied smirk, that she misses the mark on the character both at her most formidable and her most pathetic. Most of all, Nixon sacrifices the acid humor as line after line gets undersold."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117931806?categoryid=33&cs=1

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:56pm

Have you seen the production, Margo?

[Just_John]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 9:57pm

Yes they do have student rush an hour before curtain for $15 when not sold out, which it has been the 5 or 6 times I tried to get it. But now with these reviews hopefully it won't be as hard.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 10:06pm

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.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:14pm

Theatremania is also mixed:

"Throughout The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie -- both Muriel Spark's minor-classic novel and Jay Presson Allen's articulate stage adaptation of it, now being revived by the New Group -- the bold and eccentric title character reiterates that she's in her prime. Indeed, Miss Brodie is hitting her stride as she gloriously manipulates adolescent girls in an Edinburgh classroom. Therefore, it's a let-down that Cynthia Nixon, taking on the role just four months after winning a Tony Award for Rabbit Hole, is not performing at her best. The result is Spark with little spark.

Nixon looks willowy and cameo-lovely in Eric Becker's 1930s frocks and Paul Huntley's wavy auburn wig, but she has made a miscalculation in her interpretation of the plum role that earned a Tony for Zoe Caldwell in 1968 and an Academy Award for Maggie Smith for the 1969 film version. Jean Brodie, raving about truth and beauty as well as the joys of Benito Mussolini, has little self-awareness and is plagued by myriad affectations. But Nixon's problem, shared by director Scott Elliott, is that she allows the audience to see how painstakingly she's layering on those affectations. "Why must you always strike attitudes?" Jean Brodie is asked. The same question could be put to Nixon, since she should be striking Brodie's attitudes, not her own.

Incidentally, the first layer -- applied like thick impasto on a Van Gogh canvas -- is the weird accent she's developed. There are traces of the Scottish burr in it, but also hints of who-knows-what-else. Listening to this Jean Brodie is like rapidly changing radio stations on the Continent. It's right for the woman to sound as if her crusade for refinement is threatening to run away with her; but if her speech is confounding, then it's simply off-putting. (Dialogue coach Stephen Gabis comes in for his share of the blame here.) Moreover, the pace that Elliott has set for Brodie and her four-girl brood remains ponderous throughout the play, including Brodie's dealings with the frustrated headmistress Miss Mackay (Lisa Emery, clipped and matter-of-fact), the philandering art teacher Teddy Lloyd (Ritchie Coster, properly lubricious), and the unsure music teacher Gordon Lowther (John Pankow, appealingly bumbling)."


http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/9189

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:20pm

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.
_______________________________________________________________

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.
________________________________________________________________

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

[FoscasBohemianDream]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:26pm

My question is why she was even cast in the show if every critic seem to have known from the beginning that she was entirely miscast in the role?

[bwaylover86]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:34pm

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??

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:42pm

Why does no one listen, Margo? WHY DOES NO ONE LISTEN?!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:58pm

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.

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

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 1:32am

Newark Star-Ledger likes it better than the others:

"Intermittently framed by a clunky looking-back viewpoint, as told by one of Brodie's "little girls" decades later, the 1965 play registers today as stodgy in its formal structure, although its voluble contents are enjoyable on a scene-by-scene basis.

A "Masterpiece Theatre" sort of gravity that clings to this revival is likely to please some viewers as much as it may lull others to sleep. The New Group's regular customers probably expect a spikier presentation of the play from its artistic director, Scott Elliott, who often does so effectively by nasty works such as "Hurlyburly" and "Abigail's Party."
________________________________________________________________

The show's relatively cool temperature is quickly established by Nixon's thoughtful portrait of Brodie as a very self-possessed woman who believes she knows precisely what she is doing at every moment.

In the 1969 film version, Maggie Smith won an Oscar as best actress with a flamboyant depiction of Brodie's character. Not going in for any outlandish mannerisms or intonations, Nixon instead generates a glowing sort of personal radiance that attracts Brodie's students like a beacon of wisdom.

Nixon's Brodie appears so confident and sometimes even calculating in dealing with challenges that her eventual downfall seems like an unexpected plot twist.

Her admirable restraint is an effective acting choice, even if it's not a flashy interpretation. Giving Nixon few more changes of costume would better illustrate Brodie's colorful taste in attire.
_______________________________________________________________

The Scottish burrs employed here range all over the map of Europe. But the emotional truth of the New Group's revival, however muted, is valid and convincing."

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1160454933190710.xml&coll=1

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 2:31am

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

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 4:51am

Daily News:

"The truly gifted Nixon excels at playing rather ordinary women. She won a Tony as a grieving mother in "Rabbit Hole" and an Emmy playing a tough yet tender lawyer on "Sex and the City."

While I admire her ambition here, she is miscast as the outsize eccentric Jean Brodie. A narcissistic know-it-all as magnificent as she is ridiculous, Brodie says she is "in the business of putting big heads on small shoulders." That includes sharing her opinions with pet students on art, romance and, oh, yes, Fascism - which leads to a girl's death.

Nixon, under director Scott Elliott, delivers a good performance, but she's not idiosyncratic enough or as enthralling as she must be for the play to fly. It doesn't help that Smith's shadow still looms large over the role and that Nixon's accent skitters from Scotland to Ireland to Eastern Europe."


http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/460094p-387074c.html

[Auggie27]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 8:14am

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?

[mlsheehan]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 11:48am

I'd like to see what Victoria Clark could do with this role. I think she would be something to see.

[Garland Grrrl]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 3:18pm

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.

[TheaterJunkie]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 5:07pm

I still want to see this production, but I wish it got better reviews! (I love Cynthia Nixon!)

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 10/12/06 at 1:02am

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?

[Magdalene]

Posted: 10/12/06 at 11:30am

I've read the reviews (thanks Margo!) and was a little surprised. I saw the show a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it---though the accents did change a bit at times (which is unnerving) and the nudity made me a bit uncomfortable initially.
This I attribute to the acting ability of the actresses who played the girls---once it dawned on me that no one is going to let an underage girl disrobe on stage, it became a non-issue!