‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ Review: Gayle Rankin’s Magnetic Turn

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Reviving Muriel Spark’s famous Edinburgh schoolteacher carries the risk of slipping into knowing, witty nostalgia. The new National Theatre of Scotland, Royal Lyceum, and Pitlochry Festival Theatre co-production admirably resists this trap.

Set in the 1930s, the story follows the unorthodox Jean Brodie (Gayle Rankin), a teacher who ignores standard education to mould a tight-knit group of young girls—her “crème de la crème.” Rather than delivering a quaint period piece, director Vicky Featherstone offers a visually striking, performatively electric staging, even as it tweaks the soul of the original text.

Visually, the production is a triumph. Set designer Chloe Lamford and costume designer Anna Orton banish cosy classroom aesthetics in favour of a towering, terracotta-coloured amphitheatre. This imposing, rather sterile arena elevates Jean Brodie (Gayle Rankin) into a monumental figure demanding worship, aided by Lewis den Hertog’s striking video design. The atmosphere is only amplified by Lizzie Powell’s lighting design, which shifts from casting a heroic halo around Brodie to snapping into stark, interrogative glares, all underscored by Pippa Murphy’s evocative soundscape and score.

Stepping into this space, Rankin is a magnetic force. Tackling the iconic role without the least period stiffness, Rankin glides across the stage barefoot, moving with fluid, predatory precision. She perfectly balances the character’s avant-garde rebellion with a suffocating narcissism. It becomes entirely believable that her impressionable students would eagerly absorb her tales of classical art, European fascism, and her own complicated relationships with music teacher Gordon Lowther (Brian Ferguson) and art master Teddy Lloyd (Dyfan Dwyfor).

“Rather than delivering a quaint period piece, director Vicky Featherstone offers a visually striking, performatively electric staging, even as it tweaks the soul of the original text.

The young ensemble playing the “crème de la crème” matches Rankin’s intensity beautifully, sharing a kinetic energy that makes their transition from wide-eyed infatuation to sharper emerging adulthood all the more compelling. Aided by Featherstone’s energised direction, this dynamic ensures the play’s pacing never slackens, driving forward with ruthless efficiency.

A Secular Shift

Yet, despite these aesthetics, the production shifts focus in its core interpretation. Adapter David Harrower leans into a Brodie primarily as a trailblazing, secular rebel who clashes with the strict headmistress, Miss Mackay (Maureen Beattie). Beattie brings a formidable gravitas to these confrontations, playing Mackay as a steel-spined anchor against Brodie’s chaos rather than a stuffy antagonist. However, by focusing so heavily on these earthly ideological battles and smoothing over the deep, religious themes of Spark’s text, the creative team mutes the chilling reality of a self-deifying teacher who rejects Calvinism whilst asserting the right to dictate the destinies of her “elect.”

Without this underlying spiritual muscle, the production reaches for more conventional ways to illustrate peril, such as adding a scene where Brodie inexplicably plies the underage girls with sherry. Another creative curiosity arises in how the production handles the girls’ coming-of-age: their emerging maturity symbolised by uniforms becoming see-through. It is a striking but curious choice for a staging otherwise more sexless than Spark’s novel. In Harrower’s telling, Lloyd’s studio is far, far safer than Brodie’s abode.

These thematic reframings impact a narrative which hinges on Brodie’s relationship with her sharpest pupil, Sandy (Bobby Rainsbury). While Rainsbury holds the stage impressively as a vital, slow-burn counterweight to Rankin’s magnetism, the script ultimately limits her trajectory. In this framing, Sandy is a more conventional, much more easily scandalised whistleblower than an intellectually fascinated kindred spirit, ultimately as damaged by her final, necessary betrayal as Brodie herself.

“These thematic reframings impact a narrative which hinges on Brodie’s relationship with her sharpest pupil, Sandy (Bobby Rainsbury). While Rainsbury holds the stage impressively as a vital, slow-burn counterweight to Rankin’s magnetism, the script ultimately limits her trajectory.“

For all the admirable dramatic pace, this loss of sophistication in turn makes the second act feel rather long and under-nourished. It’s the ultimate consequence of trading some of the cynical, spiritual darkness of Spark’s masterpiece for something sleeker and safer by 21st-century standards.

Even so, it remains a gorgeously designed, superbly acted piece of theatre that brings vital fresh energy to a classic, just one which chooses to leave the deepest shadows of its protagonist largely unexplored.

Featured Image: Gayle Rankin – Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic