Theatre reviews: The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie | What Every Woman Knows | Singin' In The Rain

Published on Wednesday 8 July 2009 19:02

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE **** WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS *** PITLOCHRY FESTIVAL THEATRE SINGIN' IN THE RAIN *** PLAYHOUSE, EDINBURGH

IF THERE are those still disgruntled with the National Theatre of Scotland for preferring new work to the back-catalogue of rarely-performed Scottish plays, then there's no doubt where they should be heading this summer, for a taste of what might have been. The place is Pitlochry Festival Theatre, where, with support from this year's Homecoming Fund, the 16-strong company is presenting an all-Scottish summer season, with work ranging from a new musical version of Whisky Galore, to Simon Donald's 1990s gangster drama The Life Of Stuff. It's an interesting experiment; and so far, audiences seem to be lapping it up.

The only problem is that to judge by the shows I've seen so far, it's devilish difficult, given this kind of repertoire, to avoid sliding into a series of clichs about Scottish life and character so narrow and moth-eaten that it's difficult to see why anyone under the age of 50 or so would give them the time of day. Muriel Spark's 1961 novel The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, for example, is a truly great piece of Scottish writing, a fierce assault on the smug, joyless and sexless quality of Edinburgh middle-class life in the 1930s. Its magnificent heroine, Jean Brodie, is a dangerously confused woman, romantic, headstrong, left single by the holocaust of young men in the First World War; and forced to work out her frustrations as a teacher in a conventional Edinburgh girls' school, where her passionate relationship with her pupils gradually deteriorates from the eccentric and enriching, to the damaging and politically vicious.

There's just one major problem in Richard Baron's new Pitlochry production, though, and that lies in his decision to allow Helen Logan, in a bravura performance as Miss Brodie, to present her largely as a stereotyped figure of fun, a caricature of a pretentious Morningside spinster in a tight-fitting orange-red dress. The effect of this narrowing of Brodie's character is to make the story much less radical and more conventional; compared with this laughable eccentric, Elizabeth Graham's reactionary old headmistress seems like a pillar of common sense, greeted with waves of approval by the audience.

Everything else about Baron's production, though, is a model of seriousness, professionalism and insight, from Ken Harrison's brilliantly effective set – a series of simple art-deco-influenced interiors against a distant Edinburgh skyline – to a stunning series of supporting performances, notably from an inspired Irene Allen as Sandy, the quiet, patronised girl who eventually betrays Miss Brodie in every possible way. And at its best, Baron's staging reflects the full political weight of a superb 20th-century story, by perhaps the greatest Scottish novelist of the postwar age.

JM Barrie's What Every Woman Knows, by contrast, is a well-made and witty play that struggles to stand the test of time, so clearly does it deal in stereotypes long past their sell-by date. Set in Scotland and London in the early years of the 20th century, it describes the glittering political career of one John Shand, a young and solemn lad o' pairts from humble Scottish origins, whose future at Westminster beckons when a family of local small businessmen offer to sponsor his education, in return for his marriage to their plain-looking sister, Maggie.

The play's joke is that Maggie, once established as a Westminster wife, emerges as a more gifted politician than her pompous young husband, who thinks his career is all his own work; its more serious drama has to do with the fact that John, after a joyless youth, eventually falls passionately in love with a posh London suffragette, Lady Sybil.

All this is vividly laid before us in Durnin's generous production, with a spirited cast led by Irene Allen as Maggie, and an excellent Christopher Daley as John, complete with humourless Gordon Brown voice. But the play's relentless London-Scottish stereotyping of Barrie's native land as a place of dour ambition and social awkwardness, whose natives have no higher ambition than to get "on the make" in London, really grates on the ear of anyone who has any respect for the real complexity and dynamism of Scottish life.

And as for the idea that marriage utterly depends on women pretending that they are all idiots, and their husbands are all geniuses – well, it's depressing to find some audiences still laughing contentedly at this kind of sexist twaddle, while the young and forward-looking stay away from the theatre in droves.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh, the Playhouse briefly plays host to a touring production of Singin' In The Rain so all-round pleasant and nice, and so completely unremarkable, that it's tempting to quote Miss Jean Brodie herself, and observe that "for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like". Alison Pollard's production makes a neat and witty job of the stage version of the great 1952 film musical about Hollywood's transition, in the 1920s, from silent movies to talking pictures. The use of mock black-and-white film footage is entertaining, Tim Flavin is in elegant and admirable form in the Gene Kelly role of hero Don Lockwood, and the big song-and-dance numbers – from Singin' In The Rain to Broadway Melody – are delivered with real panache, and not too much superhuman gloss. Why anyone is bothering, of course, is another question; there's no real fire or passion here. But it's good escapist fun for anyone looking for a pleasant night out in Edinburgh; and at this holiday time, after such a winter of economic gloom, there should be no lack of demand for that.

&#149 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and What Every Woman Knows are both in repertoire at Pitlochry until October. Singin' In The Rain is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, until 11 July, and at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, from 1-5 September.