So much of her energy is channeled into conquering a Scottish brogue, and into maintaining a complicitous, self-satisfied smirk, that she misses the mark on the character both at her most formidable and her most pathetic. Thus it’s perhaps unsurprising that Nixon rarely connects with the character, whom she misreads as an excited rather than exciting woman. Those qualities were deftly applied in her Tony-winning turn last season in “Rabbit Hole,” but they don’t fit flawed, fanciful Jean Brodie. Nixon tends to convey flinty, grounded intelligence, her warmth and humor nestled behind a circumspect veneer. Her romantic swooning, shameless narcissism, Svengali-like mystique and reckless embrace of political causes - all in the sometimes muddled service of Goodness, Truth and Beauty - demand theatrical affectation, not naturalism. Jean Brodie is a larger-than-life Pied Piper who sweeps through the play, trailing the chosen girls of her set behind her like adoring disciples. On the evidence presented in director Scott Elliott’s pedestrian staging, this is a profound mismatch of leading actress and character. Nixon may be capable of generating those qualities, but she fails to summon them here.

Those interpreters share some fundamental characteristics of the flamboyant Edinburgh teacher from the Marcia Blaine School for Girls - a facility for self-aggrandizing eccentricity innate pride, poise and authority and the ability to balance steely determination with vulnerability. Adapted by playwright Jay Presson Allen from Muriel Spark’s 1961 novel, Miss Brodie has been a magnet in many incarnations for grande dames of the stage, among them Zoe Caldwell, Vanessa Redgrave, Geraldine McEwan, Fiona Shaw and Maggie Smith, who won an Oscar for the 1968 screen version.

The prime of miss jean brodie novel