The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Having read the book (more years ago than I care to remember) and seen the film (much more recently) and thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought it might be good to see the play, which was being put on by Nadine's Window at the Baron's Court Theatre in Comeragh Road, which is just a longish walk or a short bas-ride away.   The Theatre used to be called The Curtain's Up, and is in the cellar of The Curtain's Up pub.    One of the quirky things about them - apart from the fact that it is a minute little theatre with seating on three sides of the room and no stage, just a space in the centre - used to be the their names for their facilities - no pictures or the usual wording, but Skirts Up and Trousers Down - which now seem to have been changed.

The characters were all well cast - Mary Macgregor really seemed as dopey as she was in the book and the film, Sandy and Jenny looked exactly right, and Miss Jean Brodie was definitely in good form.     You could just imagine her as a real life person.   Terry Lloyd and Mr. Lowther were also very believable characters, and the whole play was set in the context of an interview with flashbacks between Sandy (now Sister Helena) and an American Baptist journalist who was fascinated by her best-selling book.   Somewhat unusually, I found myself sitting next to a Swedish couple on holiday, who had seen he film and just happened to see the play was on.

The play definitely followed the film rather than the book - and had as little in common with the book as the film did, apart form the fact that both were about a teacher who exerted an undue and not very healthy influence on a group of impressionable young girls, one of whom eventually betrayed her.   And that, I think was the whole point of the story - how forceful and charismatic adults can influence young children, moulding them into their way of thinking and believing.   Miss Brodie, a libertarian in the days when libertarianism was not welcomed among teachers,  particularly female teachers, sought to impress her ideas on her group - she was not interested in educating them in the normal subjects, but in influencing them on moral issues and in encouraging them to see art and music, and the behaviour often associated with artists, as more important than subjects like Maths.