I went to see the press night of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton on Wednesday and was simply blown away. It is a gorgeous, intelligent and nuanced production of a wonderful play. An imaginative though not overpowering design - featuring perfect costumes for Brodie, excellent sound design and direction (by Laurie Sansom) that leads us in and out of fantasy and reality with enormous skill.

But it is Anna Francolini's performance that is really mesmerising - an incredible characterisation that is at once all her own, and all Jean Brodie. We, like her girls, are hypnotised by her disposition, which leads us to a terrifically moving second Act. Funny, moving and a beautiful play, beautifully produced.

If you're in the area, or in London, I heartily recommend it - it truly was an inspiring evening in the theatre - and productions like this should be supported and savoured.

I found one review so far on line : http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.p...iss-jean-brodie

That is a rather unfortunate (generated by the computer) abbreviation of the url .. !

That sounds great. I was hugely dissappointed by Phillida Lloyd's production at the National about 10 years ago. Fiona Shaw gave a truly bizzarre interpretation - to the extent of using a Cork accent instead on an Edinburgh one. There were all these bizarre tableaux where she and the girls recreated religious paintings representing the Descent from the Cross and the Last Supper. The play was totally lost. I had been looking forward to it as I greatly admire Jay Presson Allen's writing for the screen both in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (where she improved on the structure of the novel) and especially Cabaret where she drew all the strands of the disparate source material from Ishserwood and Van Druten to create something that would have been superlative even without the great Kander and Ebb score. I hope the production in Northhampton does well - its a brave role for any actress as Miss Brodie will forever be Maggie Smith to many people.

HA HA

Anna is an amzing actress

Where will it be on in London?

It's not that it's coming into town, I only meant that I live in London and hopped on a train to Northampton, and it's comfortably under a hour - so not a problem at all for London dwellers to see if they fancy it.

Sorry, a bit slow on the uptake there! Thanks for setting me straight!

WoS Central England has a review up:

http://www.whatsonstage.com/blogs/central/

...and there's another at my website - http://mrgdavies.com/theatrereviews.aspx - which should also be making it to the What's On Stage Midlands site in due course...

On behalf of everyone at Royal & Derngate we would like to thank you all for your positive comments on the show and Anna's performance. We are delighted that you have enjoyed our production and hope that those of you who have not yet seen it will catch it before it ends on 4 October. We certainly hope to be able to give it another life at some point in the future. Below are links to two online reviews:

http://blogs.birminghampost.net/lifestyle/...-time.html#more

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.p...iss-jean-brodie

http://www.whatsonstage.com/blogs/central/?p=51

http://icnorthants.icnetwork.co.uk/enterta...-name_page.html

Royal & Derngate Arts Team