The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

When I was a small boy, they filmed some of the outdoor scenes of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in my grandmother’s street in Edinburgh. I remember pressing my face against the window glass and experiencing a kind of magic. It was the same kind of magic I encountered at the Assembly Hall watching this stage adaptation by Jay Presson Allan. I remembered the story well, and there were comfortable moments of easy familiarity, but there was much that was new to me. This was a darker tale than I ever recalled.

Anna Francolini is simply breathtaking as the charismatic, inspirational Miss Jean Brodie who utters the immortal words, “Give me a girl of impressionable age and she is mine for life”. I was struck by how much Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys” owes to this earlier story of school life and betrayal. It’s a much-revisited theme, and Robin Williams did it to tear-jerking effect in “Dead Poets Society”. Miss Jean Brodie, however, bears the original stamp, and it shows in all its freshness in this wonderful spell-weaving production.

Science is not a subject with which Miss Brodie believes her girls should sully their minds. Art, beauty and science are the pinnacles of education and the areas in which they should elevate their young minds. A trip to an art gallery is performed in marching style under a barrage of umbrellas which heralds the more naive areas of Miss Brodie’s personal curriculum, her fascination with and admiration for Hitler and Mussolini. Well, this is 1931, and let’s not forget that she was hardly unique in that era which saw the dawn of Fascism. This is where the play casts its darker magic, and we watch enthralled as she preaches to her girls behind images of blackshirts. It is impossible to feel anger or lose sympathy with her, so naturally and so passionately does she embrace the ideal. It is only in the later scenes, when the admiration of her girls turns to disloyalty and tragedy, that we see her exposed, a dangerous woman who has caused more harm than good and whose agenda leads inexorably to the death of a pupil, as painfully misguided as Miss Brodie herself.

The girls are excellent, but the show belongs to Francolini (ironically a perfect name for the role). She is indeed an actress in her prime. She held the Assembly Hall audience in the palm of her hand for a full two hours.

If I had any gripe with the production, it was in some moments of careless blocking, when I couldn’t see any faces, and the voices were difficult to hear, but I’m sure these will be ironed out as the production runs. Do head up The Mound without delay. This extraordinary show is surely the creme-da-le-creme of the Edinburgh Fringe.