The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Anna Francolini’s portrayal of Miss Jean Brodie is a virtuoso performance but, unfortunately, she finds herself at the centre of a very mediocre production.

With great flair, Francolini really brings Muriel Spark's famous character to life. She sublimely captures the self-assurance of a woman for whom confidence is the only protection from the fearful world she finds herself both trapped in and alienated from. Her composed physicality and restrained delivery simultaneously manage to communicate the disquiet of a woman haunted by the prospect that her true prime passed unfulfilled, and whose life is now lived vicariously through the girls she mentors.

Unfortunately the production offers little to compliment its lead. Too often it resembles St Trinians, with awkward caricatures of naughty schoolgirls giggling about sex and a headmistress reduced to little more than Presbyterian stereotype. Several scenes jar, in particular a wholly out of place moment containing an apparently pointless girl’s dance routine which would have been—all things considered—better suited to a production of Annie.

Too often humour replaced emotion and the complex strain between desire and repression is often lost. In particular the four lead schoolgirls fail to express the emotions produced by their individual awakening identities, both intellectual and sexual. The script’s superficial acknowledgement of Brodie’s belief in Calvinist predestination is a final disappointment, without which her actions appear the product of an overly modern secular individualism.