Cultural Dessert

Another trip to the Royal Theatre in Northampton last Saturday to see another excellent in-house production. I had seen clips of the celebrated 1961 film of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' but had never watched it in full, nor read the original novel by Muriel Spark. Nevertheless it felt quite familiar so it was exciting to discover, through the stage adaptation by Jay Presson Allan, that the story was much darker and more complex than I had expected. I was surprised to discover how much Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys' owes to 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' - and, in a neat reciprocation, how much Laurie Sansom's Royal & Derngate production was indebted to Nicholas Hytner's staging of the Alan Bennett play. I loved the set - apparently constructed entirely from blackboards covered in the chalked memories of earlier lessons. And it was fantastic to see Sansom once again integrating local amateur performers into the cast (as he did in Follies - reviewed here in November 2006 - and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - reviewed here in February 2008). This time the senior chamber choir of Northampton School for Girls, 'Madrigalis', was used to populate Miss Brodie's class and provide musical interludes. Anna Francolini was great as Brodie - confident, charismatic, quirky, inspirational yet strangely naive: truly the crème de la crème.