The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Signal Ensemble Theater

"Who knew that an old warhorse of a play could pulsate with so much energy, sexuality and resonance in a superbly entertaining revival such as this one?" - NewCity Chicago

"Signal’s brisk if slightly mannered production dutifully showcases Spark’s proto-feminist worldview with a refreshingly minimal, scaled-down staging" - TimeOut Chicago


04/11/09 - 05/17/09

8p Thu-Sat; 3p Sun


Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times 4/14/09 - “Formidable teachers are truly subversive creatures, often without even knowing it. They have the power to shape minds, and even if they don't always bend the most independent thinkers in their classrooms to conform to their own way of seeing the world, they leave a lasting emotional and intellectual imprint.

This certainly is the case with Jean Brodie, the middle-age "spinster" who teaches a group of pre-pubescents at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Scotland in the early 1930s. The central force in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Jay Presson Allen's popular play (based on a Muriel Spark novel), Miss Brodie eventually is taught a bitter lesson herself. The malleable minds she has molded so carefully can also rear their pretty little heads and take a big bite out of their teacher.

Allen's play (which first came to the stage in the 1960s, when college professors and their students often were locked in intensely political relationships) is now receiving an uneven revival by the Signal Ensemble Theatre under the direction of Ronan Marra. The production has its moments, especially in the second act, but it never quite finds its full tragicomic footing. A good deal of the problem has to do with Marra's casting choice for his leading lady.

Instead of the usual aura of faded glamor (Vanessa Redgrave, Zoe Caldwell and Maggie Smith famously played this role), Signal's Miss Brodie is the bright, self-assured Patricia Austin. A short, stocky actress, she lacks the physical grace needed to suggest a woman who not only is still somewhat attractive to men, but who possesses enough flash as a romantic icon to inspire her students to emulate her mystique.

Of course maybe this is the point -- that Brodie fails to see herself clearly on any level, and that her enthusiasms -- for art and opera, for progressive education and free love, and finally for a trio of flashy fascists (Franco, Mussolini and Hitler) -- are not exactly based on deep thinking.

The one student who ultimately does develop a mind of her own is Sandy. And the charismatic Simone Roos is exceptionally good as this girl who is smart enough and (not incidentally) emotionally hurt enough to rebel.

Joseph Stearns slowly grows into the role of the art teacher and very married philanderer, while Aaron Snook, as the priggish music teacher, catches fire when he finally asserts himself”



Chris Piatt, TimeOut Chicago 4/22/09 - "Miss Brodie, the crisp, equine, brilliant heroine of Muriel Spark’s 1961 novella, is cruising for a bruising the moment we see her in Allen’s stage adaptation.

Always attired in a frock slightly too colorful not to be noticed, the cockeyed Scottish girls’ boarding-school teacher encourages her pupils to stimulate themselves creatively (she introduces them to lurid modern art), sensually (she practices free love with the male faculty) and politically (she has a jones for the efficient leadership of Mussolini and Franco). Given that a single woman in 1931 Scotland is expected to spend her evenings with Agatha Christie and a glass of warm milk, it’s clear the meter is running on her tenure.

Signal’s brisk if slightly mannered production dutifully showcases Spark’s proto-feminist worldview with a refreshingly minimal, scaled-down staging. (Designer Melania Delancey’s clever trick places school desks and their students in the audience, making us part of Brodie’s seductive lectures without violating our comfort zone.) And while a lively central performance from unlikely star Austin goes a long way—she demonstrates that an intelligent, compact woman of nonconventional beauty can be far more devastating than an Amazon—Marra’s fluid but self-conscious direction never lets us forget we’re watching a play.

Two stumbling blocks, in particular, can trip up the effort: too-careful accents and the narrow age gap between the actors playing the young teens and the ones playing their compromised elders.

On the other hand, Jean Brodie is a daunting feminist narrative that asks for no congratulations on its gender politics; it asks only for our attention span and engagement. Were she written today, we’d be told to admire her. In this presentation, we’re like her verdant students: encouraged to decide for ourselves.



The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Tony Adler, Chicago Reader Jean Brodie is a dimestore Ayn Rand who makes acolytes of a bunch of adolescents at a Scottish school for girls. Declaring that she's in the business of putting "old heads on young shoulders," she ignores the curriculum to preen before her charges, absorb them into her psychosexual fantasies, and turn them into little fascists.

Thing is, it's not just naive kids who are seduced. She pulls some adults into her bizarre orbit, too. Playing Brodie as a transparent prig, with a chin-up, chest-out carriage not unlike Mussolini's, Patricia Austin never communicates Brodie's mystique, which makes it an open question why everyone's so taken with her. Signal Ensemble Theatre's otherwise nicely realized production has a hole at its center.



Fabrizio Almedia, NewCity Chicago 4/16/09 - “A mind may be a terrible thing to waste, but it’s also a terribly entertaining thrill to watch being corrupted.

“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Jay Presson Allen’s dramatization of Muriel Spark’s novel from the 1960s about a controversial schoolteacher in 1930s Edinburgh and the dangerous impact she has on a handful of young girls, is sometimes a clunky affair with an outdated framing device in which the play is “remembered” and tediously analyzed by a character being interviewed. Its ideas on Calvinism, Catholicism, Fascism and countless other -isms certainly had more resonance and bite decades ago, and its examination of Scottish class and sexual mores would mean little to a modern-day American audience. But it also remains a rare tour de force opportunity for a mature actress, contains several passages of dynamic and intelligent writing (much of it lifted directly from Spark’s novel) and on a very basic level celebrates that teacher in everyone’s life who for better or for worse left an indelible mark. But even a star performance, some good writing and nostalgia isn’t enough to dramatically propel a two-hour plus evening. There needs to be more, and in this remarkable revival from director Ronan Marra and Signal Ensemble Theatre, there is.

From the moment of her first entrance, this Jean Brodie (Patricia Austin) preens like a peacock, struts with a staccato momentum and strikes poses with a monstrously self-absorbed attitude usually reserved for fashion models. When she speaks, she handles the rhythm and imagery of her passages as if speaking Shakespearean verse. Her audience, both us and the girls on stage, are dazzled, but it’s ultimately a showy performance that lives mostly on the surface. She’s never boring, but it becomes more interesting (and insightful into this revival) to watch her students’ reactions to her on their faces or through the nervous twitching of their bodies.

Indeed, when Brodie speaks of her girls’ developing sexuality and beauty, of their future love affairs—by which point she is living vicariously through her pupils for the sexual fulfillment she craves but cannot allow herself to embrace—it becomes wildly inappropriate. When art teacher Lloyd leers at Brodie’s girls (unassuming Joseph Stearns giving an incredibly sexy performance), and ultimately seduces one of them, the level of discomfort—both on stage and in the audience—is palpable. It reminds me of when a person looks at a teenager and comments on how attractive they’ll be someday… at best, it’s an accurate but awkward observation, at worst it’s prurient and downright creepy.

This is the sexual tension that director Marra and his superb Signal Ensemble actors have found deep within the script’s subtext, making it abundantly clear that although a lot of political and sexual attitudes have changed in the forty-something years since this play premiered, the one towards the sexual objectification of minors by adults or persons of power hasn’t. While “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” still manages to be about the downfall of a remarkable woman, and manages to entertain as such with its histrionic declamations on art, truth and beauty, Marra doesn’t make it the tragic melodrama of other productions. Pitched somewhere between a great educator and naïve woman, who has sacrificed her own sexuality but misguidedly projected it onto her students, this Jean Brodie may not have all our sympathies—the girls win that—but she certainly has our attention, thanks to Austin’s indefatigable energy.

Who knew that an old warhorse of a play could pulsate with so much energy, sexuality and resonance in a superbly entertaining revival such as this one? After all these years, I guess “Miss Brodie” still has a lesson or two left in her”



The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City Times 4/22/09

Adolescent crushes are a troublesome but unavoidable rite-of-passage, not unlike measles. Heroic mentors, with their mysterious hints of a world beyond our own mundane experience, ignite our imaginations, compelling us to deeds essayed in hopes of bringing us closer to their exalted status—and how can there be any harm in youngsters striving for excellence, whatever their motive? It's only when the objects of adoration are, themselves, enamored of the scenario imposed on them that they become a hazard to their immediate acquaintances.

The title character in Muriel Spark's novel, adapted for the stage by Jay Presson Allen, is just such a contradiction. The freethinking instructor at the Marcia Blaine Women's Academy enlivens her pupils' lessons with anecdotes of personal adventure tailor-made for appeal to hormone-driven girlish fancies—her lost sweetheart, slain in the recent great war, for example, or her speculative alliances with two of her male colleagues. Over time, it becomes apparent that Miss Brodie's first loyalty is to her own egotistical ideologies, other people serving as mere props to be manipulated into sharing in her casuistic machinations. But despite the forces of common sense marshaled against her, her spurned admirers—from the neglected disciple hungry for attention to the ex-lover wise enough to see through the game—know that they will never be free of her influence.

Allen's play is usually staged as a star vehicle for a patrician leading lady, making director Ronan Marra's choice of Patricia Austin—an actress more “sonsie” ( as Brodie's fellow Scots might say ) than statuesque—to play the dazzling schoolmistress a curious one. But as with all larger-than-life personalities, her credibility is less the product of her persona's own achievements than the responses of those surrounding her. However absurd her initial posturing may strike us, the obsessive fascination of her companions soon infects the most emotionally detached spectator with sufficient zeal to make us pity her inevitable comeuppance, even as we acknowledge its necessity.

The supporting cast assembled for this Signal Ensemble production—notably, Joseph Stearns and Aaron Snook as the befuddled swains, Brigitte Ditmars as the school's stern chief administrator, and a covey of young women, led by the always-beguiling Simone Roos—execute their responsibilities with insightful aplomb. Assisted by Elise Kauzlaric's phoneme-perfect dialects, their performances invoke both horror at the exploitation—however unconscious—of gullible children and rueful memories of our own reluctant farewells to false idols.



The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Steadstyle.com - “The Chopin Theatre is one of the little treasures of our theater scene. With a little coffee shop and two intimate theaters, it is easy to get to and very comfortable inside. Even the lobbies, both the upper and lower, are like visiting family. Comfy couches and seating areas make it feel like a Sunday evening at Aunt Lil's. But in addition to the comfortable surroundings there have been some extraordinary productions on both stages.

Signal Ensemble, in its sixth season, is using the studio (a fancy name for lower level) for its production of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" by Jay Presson Allen, based on the novel by Muriel Spark. This is a Scottish tale and the accents are very strong and real (dialect coaching by Elise Kauzlaric) dealing with a teacher, Miss Jean Brodie who as she says "is in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders". She does this by not just following textbooks and schedules but by teaching through what is happening in their lives and hers. Her students believe all she teaches and we see them grow up just a bit faster than we would anticipate.

The role of Miss Brodie is played by Patricia Austin, who does not have the look of what we would expect for this character. Many of us have seen others in this role and they are tall and statuesque. But what she lacks in appearance is more than made up for in the spirit and power she brings to the character. She is a spinster schoolteacher in the prime of her life after all, and thinks nothing of discussing her love life with her "girls". She has had a love for Teddy Lloyd (Joseph Stearns) that he shares, but he is married with children. He is an art teacher/artist who it seems cannot paint anyone else's face but hers. She has an affair with the music teacher, Gordon Lowther (deftly handled by Aaron Snook), who it seems wants to marry her and settle down, but she will have none of this. She is a teacher and must teach!

The headmistress (played with just the right touch by Brigitte Ditmars) is unhappy with the conduct of this student favorite and when she gets wind of this affair from a well placed letter, Brodie is reviewed by the Board. She stays on but her favorite student, one that she says would be a perfect government spy, has an affair with her would be lover Teddy and betrays every confidence Brodie had placed in her, causing her to leave the post and forcing her to realize that she is now past her prime.

Directed by Ronan Marra, this is a striking production with a clever design by Melania Lancy that allows for very little scenery. Set pieces flow on and off stage by students and keep the flow of the play at a good pace. The audience is seated on the sides and the action takes place in the center area. This is a small theater so the audience is very close to the action. In fact, the student chairs are in the audience and when we are in class, they are right with us and we are addressed as if we were students ourselves. Very clever.

The students (Angie Steffens, Meghan Reardon, Danielle O'Farrell and Kasia Januszewski) are the movers of the set pieces, as well as the other cast members. The main students, Brodie's "Girls" are played by Jessica Bennett, Cyd Blackell, Annie DiMaria and the lovely Simone Roos, who grows up very quickly. The other cast members are Eric Damon Smith as Mr. Perry and Erin Myers as Sister Helena. They open the story as he interviews the Sister about her best selling book that tells the story and then we go into flashback mode. It works very well as they weave the story. I had a little problem hearing Mr. Smith in the first scene, but his projection grew better.

This is a very nice production, clean, well acted and very well directed. Signal Ensemble Theatre should be very proud of what they are doing. "Brodie" will continue through May 16, 2009 at The Chopin Theatre located at 1543 West Division in Chicago. There is meter parking and free parking at Division and Noble (Holy Trinity Church). The CTA will get you there easily as well. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15 and $20, another bargain for live theater in Chicago. They can be purchased by calling 773-347-1350 or online at www.signalensemble.com. Looking for a Mother's Day gift? How about a Mother's Day performance for $10 per ticket.


Miss Brodie is a teacher, a formidable figure who molds young minds to her form. And what is more, she is so intensely interesting that the girls admire her above all else. But Miss Brodie is not honest. She prevaricates and then tells the girls to do as she tells them, not as she does herself. She is having an affair with the music teacher and has had one with the art teacher, and this is not the most exemplary conduct. A fantastic letter which some of her students write in her name to her lover falls into the headmistress' hands.Dismissal is averted by Miss Brodie's indomitable pluck as she threatens to sue for calumny. One girl grows too wise too soon and turns on Miss Brodie.


" Fascinating in its insights into a marvelously portrayed eccentric human being." — N.Y. Times

" Endearing hilarious, lovely, perceptive and splendid." — N.Y. Daily News

" A dramatic intelligent and merciless study of character. " — N.Y. Post

Author
Jay Presson Allen, based novel by Muriel Spark

Director
Ronan Marra

Performers
Patricia Austin, Jessica Bennett, Cyd Blakewell, Annie DiMaria, Brigitte Ditmars, Kasia Januszewski, Erin Myers, Danielle O'Farrell, Meghan Reardon, Simone Roos, Eric Damon Smith, Aaron Snook, Joseph Stearns and Angie Steffens

Production
Melania Lancy (Scenic Design), Tiffini B. Sarver (Costume Design), Julie E. Ballard (Light Design), Anthony Ingram (Sound Design), Sara Elizabeth Miller (Prop Design), Elise Kauzlaric (Dialect Coach), Bries Vannon (Asst director), Stephanie Ehemann (Production Stage Manager)

Tags: Theater, American, 2009