The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie
Donmar Warehouse, London Until Jul 28, 2hrs 35 mins
Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life,’ says Miss Jean Brodie in Muriel Spark’s much-loved 1961 novel. The story follows the eccentric schoolmistress and her special set of pupils – ‘the crème de la crème’, as she calls them – at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Thirties Edinburgh.
Vanessa Redgrave first played Miss Brodie on stage, eclipsed by Maggie Smith’s famous Oscar-winning turn in the 1969 film. Now Edinburgh-born playwright David Harrower has freshly adapted the book, directed by Polly Findlay.
The result works for one juicy reason: Lia Williams’s fabulous, funny Miss Brodie, whom we meet in a red dress and wavy ginger wig, her figure as lean and sharp as the novel’s prose.
Lia Williams is a fabulous, funny Miss Brodie. We meet her in a red dress and wavy ginger wig, her figure as lean and sharp as the novel’s prose
Williams delivers her lines with a camp whisper (the hard of hearing may struggle at the back) to give us a svelte monster who is hilarious, dangerous, and finally pitiable.
It’s riveting watching her blether on about art, extolling the virtues of the fascist Mussolini (she has a creepy crush on him), and insisting that her chosen girls become great writers, great actresses or great lovers. Her occasional put-downs are pure acid: ‘You’re not suited to humour, Mary.’
Brodie’s dark heart is caught between two men, played by Angus Wright (a joy as the reticent choirmaster Mr Lowther) and Edward MacLiam (as the one-armed war veteran art teacher, for whom the study of underaged girls is a far from ‘arm-less’ pastime).
Her great foe is the determined headmistress Miss Mackay – made both formidable and time-biding patient by Sylvestra Le Touzel.
Her great foe is the determined headmistress Miss Mackay – made both formidable and time-biding patient by Sylvestra Le Touzel (above)
The set looks, off-puttingly, like a grey concrete Sixties comp. Odd, too, is the way the present constantly fast-forwards to a convent where the grown-up Sandy, on the eve of becoming a nun in a silent order (no more listening to Miss Brodie for her), gives an interview to a reporter (Kit Young) from The Scotsman.
As a posse, the young schoolgirls giggle delightfully at the idea of teachers ‘committing sexual intercourse’. Rona Morison slowly proves an admirably cold Sandy, whose ruthlessness Brodie disastrously under-estimates. Nicola Coughlan is heartbreaking as pigtailed Joyce Emily (a character I don’t recall from the book), who finally dies in fascist Spain on a quixotic adventure criminally encouraged by guess who.
As a posse, the young schoolgirls giggle delightfully at the idea of teachers ‘committing sexual intercourse’ but the set looks, off-puttingly, like a grey concrete Sixties comp
In disgrace, the sacked Miss Brodie ends up cadaverous with cancer, visited by her favourite protégée, Sandy, who admits that it was she who put the knife in. It’s a terrific scene with a Shakespearean shiver about it.
If the adaptation has its faults, the evening is constantly lit up by an unmissably vivid performance from Lia Williams – a major actress in her prime.
My Name is Lucy Barton
Bridge Theatre, London Until Sat, 1hr 30mins
Rating: 
This has a cast of just one: three-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney, making her British stage debut. She plays an American mum-of-two stuck in hospital. Her husband won’t visit, she misses her kids, and her difficult mother sits at the end of her bed.
Linney – with long chestnut hair and a thin, shy smile – is the perfect actor for this slowly unspooling story of Lucy’s cold, abusive childhood and the shadow it has cast on her adult life. She enacts her shrill, bitchy mum and makes almost visible the kindly doctor who’s half in love with her.
Laura Linney (above) – with long chestnut hair and a thin, shy smile – is the perfect actor for this slowly unspooling story of Lucy’s cold, abusive childhood
Rona Munro’s adaptation, however, didn’t make me want to rush out and buy Elizabeth Strout’s book. Lucy’s trenchant advice to fellow writers (we learn she’s a novelist) smacks of received wisdom picked up on a creative writing course. And there are one or two plot threads that need snipping.
But I was totally sold on this as a performance. Linney commands the stage with a warm, gentle presence, invisibly directed by Richard Eyre, that makes this woman’s inner life feel overwhelmingly real.
Julie
Lyttelton Theatre, London Until Sep 8, 1hr 30mins
Rating:
Polly Stenham has transplanted the action of Strindberg’s 1888 tragedy to a posh house in north London, where damaged rich girl Julie is throwing a raucous birthday bash.
Tom Scutt’s set neatly semaphores the power imbalance between the revellers and the immigrant workers facilitating the fun: figures party on a raised platform, while in the kitchen foreground the family’s betrothed Ghanaian chauffeur, Jean, and Brazilian cleaner Kristina clear up.
Above: Vanessa Kirby and Eric Kofi Abrefa. The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby is magnetic as Julie, pivoting deftly between chucklesome Princess Margaret hauteur and bone-chilling fragility
As the night thuds on, Jean and Julie are perversely drawn to one another, eventually indulging in a spot of furtive, ultimately lethal, hate-sex.
The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby is magnetic as Julie, pivoting deftly between chucklesome Princess Margaret hauteur and bone-chilling fragility. Eric Kofi Abrefa is an assured Jean and Thalissa Teixeira blazes with vivacity as Kristina.
Yet while Stenham introduces a timely racial tension, the plot falters – would Julie and Jean’s tryst be such a disaster today?
Still, devastating performances pack an emotional punch that more than makes up for any dramatic loose ends.
Gwen Smith