Miss Jean Brodie is the teacher you wouldn’t want your children to meet.
Young, elegant and mysterious but ultimately dangerous and ready to mould the young girls she teaches into how she sees the world.
Muriel Spark’s 1960 novel has been adapted for modern stage by David Harrower and has set off on its Scottish tour at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh under the wings of The National Theatre of Scotland in partnership with the Pitlochry Festival Theatre.
The story has been spiced up for modern day, with the impressive backdrop stage simple but effective and with excellent performances from a very talented cast.
Centred around the private Marcia Blaine for Girls school in 1930s Edinburgh, teacher Miss Jean Brodie (Gayle Rankin of GLOW and House of Dragon fame) is in her prime and each year she selects her “set” of the best girls, who she plans to shape through her views on art, politics, tales of sexual liberation and exciting glimpses of the women they could become.
But in return she demands utter loyalty from them as they fall under her seductive spell, leading to fascination and danger as they start to grow up and form their own opinions.
The play starts in the last year of junior school as the easily led 12 year old’s Mary MacGregor (Liberty Black), Joyce Emily Hammond (Sophie Fortune), Monica Douglas (Tallulah Greive), Jenny Gray (Shreya Khaund Marshall) and Sandy Stranger (Bobby Rainsbury) excitedly meet Miss Brodie and quickly become infatuated.
They watch over the years and in senior school, as their smart and beautiful teacher throws herself at married music teacher, Teddy Lloyd (Dyfan Dwyfor) and keeps art tutor Gordon Lowther (Brian Ferguson) hanging from a thread as she promises him love and affection. Only head teacher Miss Mackay (Maureen Beattie) is wary of Miss Brodie’s educational methods but her concerns are ridiculed by the teacher, in front of the infatuated girls.
Miss Brodie makes her fascist views sound fun as she draws in the girls with her summer holiday “adventures” in Italy, brought home through a startling piece of set design which looks like stars on a backdrop and slowly evolves in the second act into faces, which are supporting dictator Mussolini.
All eventually turns on its head as the girls get older and wiser and pupil Sandy Stranger starts to question Miss Brodie’s political leanings.
Suddenly in her 50’s, Miss Brodie develops an internal cancer growth which speeds up her ageing appearance and her teaching world falls in.
Now alone and ill, Miss Brodie has one last meeting with Sandy, now an adult, and accuses her of her downfall, not realising the deep and lasting psychological impact she has scarred all the girls with.
Director Vicky Featherstone has done a grand job keeping the complex story alive in a truly modern and relatable way.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie runs at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh until 18th October and then moves to the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow from 21st to 24th October, His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen from 29th to 31st October and Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 4th to 7th November. Ticket availability across the venues is low, so for more details, please visit: www.nationaltheatrescotland.com.
Author Bio:
Rebecca Hay is an experienced travel writer and member of The British Guild of Travel Writers. Follow her adventures with her family on Twitter and Instagram @emojiadventurer and on Facebook via EmojiAdventurers2.
Photographs by Mihaela Bodlovic
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