The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, at the Studio Theater, seems to be getting (almost) universally poor reviews, based upon the casting of Sarah Marshall (generally recipient of rave reviews) as the central character. Jean Brodie teaches at a girls school in Scotland in the 1930s. She is unmarried, because school teachers have to be, but she is "in her prime" and her girls are all the "creme de la creme". She has had her flings, which she unsuccessfully tries to hide as more innocent relationships - the soldier lying in Flanders fields, the married artist for whom she poses, and the unmarried fellow teacher with whom she (and her girls) share Sunday afternoons. Jean Brodie is a repressed woman, whose repression results in an exaggerated version of a teacher, to whose students she imparts in her teaching the excitement she wishes for her life, and over whom she has enormous power and influence. All fine and dandy, perhaps, until she turns political, extolling power in general, especiallly as exercised by Mussolini and Franco.

The reviews say that Sarah Marshall is too old, and more the commedienne than the actress, and does not pull off the role. I disagree. You do have to accept her as she is (not glamorous or sexually alluring), but women of all physical types get involved in such doings, don't they?

And, do you recall the story of my high school teachers posted a month or so ago? When I spoke about the English teacher who ran off with the married assistant principal? She was certainly no beauty, and not particularly young or alluring. And her name was Sarah, and his name was Marshall, and after they married, she became - yes, indeed - Sarah Marshall.

So who says Sarah Marshall cannot play this role?