Theater: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Miss Brodie is a teacher of iron whim and blowtorch fervor. She is also an eccentric spinster whose frustrations, romanticism, spunk, pride and biological gusto are forever making her break out of the prim parochialism of a stuffy 1930s Scottish finishing school for girls. Zoe Caldwell acts up a typhoon in the title role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but is nonetheless unable to conceal that she is one character in pressing search of a play.

A clumsy Broadway adaptation by Mrs. Jay Allen of a Muriel Spark novel, the drama focuses on the havoc created by an invincibly...