The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Chains disappear beneath soft tulle in Vicky Featherstone’s production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In front of them, an amphitheatre in terracotta pink, looking somewhere between classical stage and lecture theatre, faces outwards to the audience. Projected works of the Italian masters clash with techno soundscapes, tensioning the design between the contemporary and the classical, the decorated surface and the harsh reality that lies beyond.

That tension runs through Gayle Rankin's Brodie, who does not merely teach the girls, but performs versions of herself at them. She lounges across the steps, cuts through the space, kicks off her shoes and controls the pace; the stage becomes an extension of her authority, and her hubris. Her girls watch, follow and imitate her. The production turns education into an act of reproduction as Brodie is revealed as both a teacher, performer, and subject of her own mythology.

Bobby Rainsbury's Sandy Stranger does an efficient job of delivering that metaphor, transforming from meek new-girl into an increasingly Brodie-esque cast, before gaining her own voice by the end of the second act. The girls' impressions and invented versions of their teacher reinforce the same point. Brodie exists simultaneously as the woman herself, the woman she imagines herself to be, and the many portraits other people construct around her.

Featherstone’s misses no opportunity to deploy this visually, from the renaissance paintings that move and seem to watch over the girls; and later, the Italian fascist imagery that starts to occupy the space more forcefully. A neo-classical marble statue is carried on to the stage after Brodie wins the girls affection by plying them with alcohol in her Church Hill tenement. The show understands that art can make a person larger than life, but also that the image can eventually become more powerful than the person it depicts. As Brodie's influence hardens, her softness starts to fall.

Rankin’s electrifying command is sharpened by the enjoyably stoic counterweight of Maureen Beattie’s Miss Mackay, while Dyfan Dwyfor’s Teddy Lloyd can match but occasionally dwarf it when given the space. But despite the strength of the individual performances, the production has moments which are less precise. The amphitheatre, for example, is used relentlessly, but sometimes clumsily, while the clattering of chains often announces an entrance before the performer has arrived.

Yet the image holds. Brodie has spent the production making herself into something monumental, and Featherstone gradually shows the cost of becoming the portrait rather than the person. By the end, it is the impression of her that survives.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by National Theatre of Scotland.