The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

The theme of this year's Pitlochry season is Home, meaning Scotland. Here that theme is narrowed down even more, to Edinburgh, but also the dangers of the Europe of the 1930s.

Except that the causes of those dangers, particularly Mussolini and Franco, are not seen as dangers so much as figures of glamour by Jean Brodie, teacher extraordinaire at the ultra conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls.

And her chosen pupils, the crème de la crème, are being asked to look not towards home but out to the equally dangerous world of adulthood. Not all of them will get there and those that do may not reach it in ways that Miss Brodie imagines. She herself by then will have suffered a devastating act of betrayal.

It's astonishing how many themes and ideas are packed into Muriel Spark's very slim novel and how well they are dramatised in Jay Presson Allen's adaptation. I hadn't expected it to be as highly theatrical as it is but, with scenes flowing effortlessly one from another thanks to Ken Harrison's splendidly flexible design, Richard Baron's excellent production constantly surprises. Climaxing in a spectacularly eye-popping tableau of death, betrayal and martyrdom, followed by the quiet mundane reality of betrayed and betrayer alone on stage, this is a production that finds all the sharp humour but also the very real hurt and pain in the play.

Helen Logan's Jean Brodie, dressed like a model for the Scottish Colourists, brings out all the affectation, theatricality and artistic drama of the charismatic teacher. But she also makes manifest her wrongheadedness, shallowness and inability to see the real people around her. To see her stripped of her peacock finery at the end is very moving.

For me the outstanding performance is that of Irene Allan as Sandy. The subtlety of her expressions allow us to see her every emotion as she finds herself being ever more sidelined by the woman she worships. The face becomes emptied of all feeling whenever we see her as the nun of her later life.

Elizabeth Graham is a firmly authoritarian headmistress, and her confrontations with Jean Brodie are among the play's high spots. Dougal Lee and Greg Powrie are wholly convincing as the two very different men in Brodie's life. And who could fail to love Isabelle Joss as poor, awkward doomed Mary Macgregor?

This is a rich and powerful production of a play which proves to be about more than its colourful title character.