Promises Promises

When the audience is wrong-footed by a play, it's usually a good sign. When mouths are left hanging open and a few people walk out, it is often a sign that uncomfortable truths are being laid bare.

Here, however, it's worryingly unclear what playwright Douglas Maxwell is trying to achieve as he wades miles out of his depth with what might be a glimpse into the mind of a delusional and seriously disturbed middle-aged woman or a revenge thriller offering a muddled critique of multiculturalism.

It all starts out cheerfully enough, with Joanna Tope's supply teacher Miss Brodie wryly recounting a conversation about her literary namesake. She paints a vivid picture of her headmaster, a calculatedly chummy people manager who, as a fellow Scot in London, gives her a copy of the Daily Record to “remind her of home”.

Miss Brodie doesn't want to be reminded of home, however, as she left under a cloud. This is part of the reason why the arrival of a highly unusual new pupil has to be handled carefully, although the audience doesn't know it yet. As an earnest administrator in a cheap suit talks to the teacher as if she herself is the six-year-old, we are invited to roll our eyes along with her, and laugh at her witty put-downs.

At this point things become fairly far-fetched, but Maxwell is just getting started. By the time he shows his hand, in a gobsmacking moment that is implausible on several levels, it's difficult to see how the play could possibly recover, and indeed it doesn't, with a climax of violent hysteria seemingly intended to reflect the misogynist origins of that word and the playwright crudely trying to sew everything together using poetic dialogue.

The subject matter demands serious treatment, but the play's tone is wildly uneven, its logic is fundamentally flawed and its bizarre treatment of female sexuality leaves a bad taste.