Theater Review—

‘Miss Jean Brodie’ May Sherman’s Best Work To Date

By Julie Stern

SHERMAN — If you can read this thank a teacher.

Most people can recall being guided and inspired by a special teacher at some point in their childhood. For many dedicated teachers their profession is a true vocation, rather than a mere job.

But there is also the dangerous and seductive side of being an educator: the lure of the ego trip. That is, the temptation to use a relationship with the students to win their adoration, and to offer stale and half-baked dogmas in the guise of intellectual profundity.

These classroom figures enhance their own sense of self by manipulating their charges. Rather than helping children to develop as individuals, they are simply acting out your own fantasies. Such is the theme of Jay Presson Allen’s sly and gripping drama, based on Muriel Spark’s novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which continues at The Sherman Playhouse on weekends thorugh the end of the month.

As the play opens, Sister Helena, a cloistered Scottish nun, is being interviewed by a curious American journalist. How is it that someone who has lived such a sheltered life has been able to write books of such worldly psychological and social insight? Who are you, he wants to know, and what made you convert to Roman Catholicism and enter a cloister?

The play is framed by Sister Helena’s memories of her years at a private girls’ school in Edinburgh in the 1930s, and in particular, of Miss Jean Brodie, a charismatic teacher who chose a group of ten-year olds to be her special project. Miss Brodie used her own life experiences to make her girls alert to wider possibilities: Although she was still in her “prime,” she assured them, her true love had been killed in Flanders, and so she was prepared to dedicate her life to her pupils . Regaling them with stories from history, mixed with accounts of her own travels, she intended to expose them to a world of culture and beauty, and to instill in them her cherished values of courage, honor, love, and truth.

Within the drab confines of a strict conservative institution, the flamboyant Miss Brodie, (with her colorful frocks, her habit of sharing personal confidences with the girls, and her general contempt for the narrow restrictive rules set down by the head mistress, Miss Mackay) is seen as a breath of fresh air, both by her pupils, and by the two male faculty members — Mr Lowther, the music teacher; and Mr Lloyd, the art master. Both men are clearly attracted to her, and her relationships with them soon become an object of great interest and speculation on the part of the girls.

When the girls become teenagers and move into the upper school, their special friendship with Miss Brodie continues. Each emerges as a distinct personality, shaped by Brodie’s analysis of their strengths: Jenny is the “beauty” who will have many passionate love affairs. Monica is the emotional one who weeps at sad stories. Mary MacGregor is the dim-witted orphan, who does whatever the others tell her, in order to be included in the group. Sandy, who is her teacher’s special confidante, is the one with “insights” who sees and understands.

While it is the passionate artist Teddy Lloyd, a married man with five children, to whom Jean is attracted, she rejects him in favor of the safety of a relationship with timid bachelor, Gordon Lowther, a pillar of the church, whom she can easily control. Instead, Jean sublimates her feelings for Teddy by setting him up to paint Jenny. Her plan is that the two of them will have a great romance.

As the precociously perceptive Sandy realizes this, she begins to grasp the extent of Jean’s narcissism, and the dangerous paths into which she is pushing all of them. When the hapless Mary MacGregor is sacrificed in the interests of Brodie’s fantasy of heroic grandeur, Sandy takes steps.

All this is the plot of a serious, thought-provoking play. What is more important, is that Jane Farnol is a remarkable director, who has gotten incredible performances from every member of her large cast. This is significant, because while Noel Desiato, who is listed in the playbill as the “star,” is indeed brilliant as Jean Brodie (just as she was equally good playing Katherine Hepburn in Tea at Five) what matters is just how every other character is clearly defined.

Frequently, the roles of children are played by older adolescents made up to look younger. Here Farnol has taken a quartet of middle school students and turned them into Scottish school girls who are so utterly convincing that it’s hard to remember you are watching a play. Abigail Heydenburg as Sandy, Becca Myhill as Jenny, Sasha Blue Krivosky as Monica, and Abby Hambridge as Mary Macgregor are absolutely perfect.

Similarly, Peter Pecora, as Gordon Lowther, Michael Wright as Teddy Lloyd, and Katherine Almquist as Miss Mackay make their characters into substantial human beings.

As I remember from reading Spark’s novel, it was a mystery which of the girls became Sister Helena, and why,  until the end. The play makes it more obvious, but Patricia Michael endows her character with spirituality and moral ambivalence as she looks back on the past and weighs the need to balance ethical judgment with compassion.

Despite the presence of nearly a dozen children in the cast, this is definitely a play for adults. Intelligent and entertaining, beautifully acted, and with a terrific set, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is conceivably the best show Sherman has ever done.

(For curtain and ticket details see the Enjoy Calendar or visit ShermanPlayers.org.)