The Royal Lyceum Theatre

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

09/10/26

The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

The titular educator is an Edinburgh icon, her legacy woven into the fabric of the city, from the Vennel’s Miss Jean Brodie Steps to Bruntsfield’s Muriel Spark Walk. Her very name references Deacon Brodie, one of the city’s most infamous 18th century luminaries, a thief and philanderer she proudly claims as her ancestor. Perhaps her duplicitous nature is part of her DNA.

This vibrant production (from the National Theatre of Scotland, The Royal Lyceum and Pitlochry Festival Theatre) breathes new life into the old favourite, amplifying the teacher’s allure as well as her failings.

It’s 1935. In Europe, Adolf Hitler is a rising threat but Benito Mussolini, although polarising, is admired by many for his bold authoritarianism. Primary school teacher Miss Jean Brodie (Gayle Rankin) is certainly a fan: she shares his aesthetic obsession with order and control. Like the Italian fascist, she is a charismatic leader – and her classroom is her country.

Miss Brodie’s eleven-year-old pupils are in their final year of Juniors and she’s supposed to be preparing them for their Senior school entrance exam. Instead, as soon as her classroom door is closed, she kicks off her shoes and denounces the system. She lambasts the conservative Miss Mackay (Maureen Beattie), encouraging the girls to mock their headmistress. In lieu of maths, she shares bon mots; rather than history, she tells tales of her holidays. In short, Miss Brodie casts a spell over her students, inspiring a cult-like devotion that feeds her monstrous ego.

Of course, we’d call it grooming nowadays. Miss Brodie’s ‘set’ are carefully selected for their pliability and romanticism, wooed with flattery, sex-talk, secrets and booze. For preteens Sandy (Bobby Rainsbury), Jenny (Shreya Khaund Marshall), Monica (Tallulah Greive), Mary (Liberty Black) and Joyce Emily (Sophie Fortune), it’s a heady, irresistible mix, in stark contrast to Miss Mackay’s moribund regime. But children have a habit of growing up and noticing their heroines’ feet of clay. And who is Miss Brodie without her posse of adoring fans?

Written by David Harrower and directed by Vicky Featherstone, this adaptation of Sparks’ best-known novel is a triumph, with a clarity of vision that renders the play every bit as engaging as its protagonist. The three-hour running time flies by. Rankin is mesmerising as the charismatic lead; it’s easy to understand why the girls are so in thrall to her, not to mention her two suitors, drippy, devoted Mr Lowther (Brian Ferguson) and brooding badass Mr Lloyd (Dyfan Dwyfor).

Chloe Lamford’s spectacular set design – a giant semi-circle of tiered steps – resembles nothing so much as a Roman amphitheatre (with the auditorium completing the circle), the perfect venue for the gladiatorial-style battle Miss Brodie believes she is engaged in, determined as she is to promote individualism and free the girls from the tyranny of ‘team spirit’. Behind the steps, Lewis den Hertog’s enormous video projections throw up ever-changing images, from Proto-Renaissance art to fascist marches, Miss Brodie’s adult worldliness dwarfing her young acolytes’ limited experience. No wonder she clings to her job so passionately; in this arena, she appears all-knowing.

I love Anna Orton’s costume design, Miss Brodie’s outfits reflecting the different stages of the girls’ relationship with her. When Rankin first enters, striking a powerful pose centre stage, she’s dressed flamboyantly in a fitted pink leather skirt and a green shirt with oversized, wing-like sleeves. We see her through her pupils’ eyes as she morphs from exotic and exciting to strong and commanding, changing into a structured suit with sharp lines and pagoda shoulders. As the girls grow older and she confides in them about her love-life, she begins to dress in a more overtly sexy way (cue tight-fitting zebra print) before finally being cut down to size, literally undressed and relegated to a nursing home and a dull dressing gown.

The girls’ costumes are interesting too. In the first act, they wear simple black smocks, complete with white collars and black knee socks. After the interval, it takes me a few minutes to notice a subtle difference: the dresses are now sheer, the girls’ sensible underwear clearly visible beneath. The imagery is clever in its simplicity, showing how the girls are becoming young women, their sexuality burgeoning despite the school’s strictures.

It’s also a sign that Miss Brodie’s reign is coming to an end.

To be honest, when I re-read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie a few years ago, I didn’t enjoy it, and I wondered if the story had lost its potency. Thanks to this magnificent production, I now know that it has not.

5 stars

Susan Singfield

The Merchant of Venice

22/01/25

The Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

New York’s Theatre for a New Audience brings The Merchant of Venice to Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum as part of a reciprocal exchange programme. Starring John Douglas Thompson as Shylock, this is a bold and provocative production, drawing explicit links between 16th century Venice and an all-too-believable near-future USA.

Director Arin Arbus says she wants “to discover what this play means to us in the here and now” – and she certainly does that, using Merchant to hold up a mirror to a divided society where people’s views are polarised and entrenched. In Shylock’s Venice, Jews have few rights. They are forced to live in ghettos, prohibited from owning property, limited in the kind of work they are allowed to do. The prejudice runs deep: even Antonio (Alfredo Narciso), widely reputed to be one of the good guys – “a kinder gentleman treads not the earth” – deems it appropriate to spit at Shylock and call him a dog, all while asking him for money. In the modern American dystopia where this production is set, Thompson’s Black Shylock suffers comparable – and recognisable – iniquities.

It feels like a timely reminder of what we need to avoid, of where discrimination and inequality inevitably lead. Who can blame Shylock’s daughter, Jessica (Danaya Esperanza), for wanting to escape the ghetto, for hooking up with Lorenzo (David Lee Huynh) and converting to Christianity? Why shouldn’t she seek a better life? But it’s her desertion that pushes Shylock, already at breaking point, over the edge, fuelling his thirst for vengeance. What has he left to lose? Just as the Christian Venetians treat the Jews as a homogenous group to be despised, so Shylock views them all as one enemy. No wonder he is furious; no wonder he shows Antonio no mercy.

But the odds are stacked against him. The legal system isn’t fair or balanced: the laws are written by the powerful. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Power corrupts. Even Portia (Isabel Arraiza), who seems a pretty decent sort at first, isn’t immune. She changes when she assumes the mantle of supremacy, swaggering into the court in her borrowed clothes and treating Shylock with cruel contempt. Arbus’s direction highlights this theme; indeed, this version of the courtroom scene is the most intensely horrifying I have ever seen. The auditorium is eerily silent, as if we’re all holding our collective breath, appalled by Portia’s gloating as she humiliates Shylock.

I’m watching this just three days after Donald Trump has issued an executive order dismantling federal diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, which lends this consciously diverse production even more weight and urgency. Shakespeare’s message transcends the centuries; we have to heed its warning.

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield