The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie review – Muriel Spark’s extraordinary heroine made more extraordinary still

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh Gayle Rankin is funny, sharp-tongued and sexually forthright as Vicky Featherstone’s production ditches 1930s starchiness for the bohemian avant garde Jean Brodie has entered the classroom of Mr Lowther (Brian Ferguson). She tells the music teacher she will not be a distraction. “Proceed as if I wasn’t here,” she says. Yeah, right. Nothing can proceed as if Jean Brodie was not there. Played

Mark Fisher October 11, 2026 · 2:45 PM 1 MIN READ

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Gayle Rankin is funny, sharp-tongued and sexually forthright as Vicky Featherstone’s production ditches 1930s starchiness for the bohemian avant garde

Jean Brodie has entered the classroom of Mr Lowther (Brian Ferguson). She tells the music teacher she will not be a distraction. “Proceed as if I wasn’t here,” she says.

Yeah, right. Nothing can proceed as if Jean Brodie was not there. Played by Gayle Rankin in a drape-sleeved top and figure-hugging leather skirt, she is impossible to ignore. Chloe Lamford’s dust-pink set is a little bit lecture theatre, an awful lot neo-classical staircase; Rankin floats across it like an exotic moth: colourful, distractable, ever present.