THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
by Muriel Spark, dramatised by Jay Presson Allen
PRODUCTIONS
2001
Performed at Northampton College Arts Centre, St Gregory's Road, Northampton
CAST & CREW
Sister Helena Carol Harrison
Sandy Stranger Anouska Burrage
Monica Douglas Kathryn Berril
Jenny Gray Dee Townsend
Mary McGregor Jo Nutt
Miss Jean Brodie Patricia Coleman
Mis McKay Mary Greaves
Mr Teddy Lloyd Vince Howells
Mr Gordon Lowther Tim Page
Younger pupils Rosemary Chapman, Katharine Dowsett, Emily Downing, Angeli Modha, Melanie Revell
Soloist Elizabeth York
Director Ursula Wright
Costume Consultant Alison Dunmore
Lighting Design Richard Walker
Set Construction Nihad Shakir, Martin Winsley
Costumes Alison Dunmore, Dorothy Granger, Pam Manning, Jean McNamara, Masque Costumes
Stage Manager Clare Brittain
Deputy Stage Manager Suzanne Wilson
Assistant Stage Managers Rosemary Chapman, Bryony Horn
Continuity Jane Lanchbury
Dialect Coach Mabel Lilley
Dresser Odette Townsend
Box Office Mary Greaves
Front of House Rob Kendall, Greta Hendy, David Ashton, Elaine Ashton
Publicity Grace Ciappara
Poster Design Tony Janney
Photo gallery
Programme notes
Ursula Wright | director
The world of this play is one that Muriel Spark knew well.
Born in 1918, she grew up in Edinburgh and went to James Gillespie's High School for Girls in the Thirties, where she was taught by a charismatic teacher called Miss Christina Kay, the inspiration for Jean Brodie.
ln an interview for the BBC, Muriel Spark said "We used to fantasise about her. She had it in her, unrealised, to be the character I invented."
Her novel, which this play dramatises, gives us a world full of contradictions: the opposing pull of Scottish Calvinism and Roman Catholicism (which she herself experienced), of progressive individualism and fascist control, of schoolgirl sexual naivete and devious adult manipulation.
Jean Brodie is representative of a whole generation of war-bereaved women, whose dreams of romantic fulfillment were trodden into the mud of the First World War.
But she is a teacher, who uses her influence to re-invent herself in her pupils, her "special" girls. She grooms them to live out her own dangerous fantasies.
But children can often see the truths that adults seek to hide and when, like her heroine The Lady of Shalott, she has to confront reality rather than view the world through a mirror of her own making, her spell is finally broken.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a study of the cult of personality, with all its dangers and attractions.
Dictators, great and small, are created and sustained by their followers.