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Now the life of this fascinating character, not seen in a full-scale production in this country since the one at the National ten years ago, has been reimagined in a brilliant new version at Royal & Derngate by artistic director Laurie Sansom, who has firmly established an exciting house style in his first season at the Northampton venue.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has a magnificently evocative and adaptable set, all blackboards and chalk and steep stairs making effective use of the Royal's famous stage height. It has moody lighting and clever projections, superb sound - including wonderful singing from the choir of a local girls' school - movement (in a gym class, for instance) that mischievously suggests Isadora Duncan and, above all, an extraordinarily gifted ensemble cast.

But the crowning glory, a phrase I do not use lightly, is the title performance from Anna Francolini. Here is a performer truly in her prime. Her great achievement is to make us see the monstrous, manipulative, Jean in all her self-delusional grandeur yet also to make us sympathise with her for her passion and her misguided and selfish dedication to her special set of girls. She is irritating and magnetic at one and the same time.

It's a performance quite the equal of the Maggie Smith film version which everyone remembers so well. But Anna Francolini is able to bring something to the character which Smith's rather cold reading missed, in my opinion - sheer unbridled sex appeal. This is a woman with passion filling every part of her being, from her intellect to her emotions - even her renunciation of the great love of her life is pitched at a level of fervor which amounts to a form of Calvinistic decadence.

If Maggie Thatcher in her prime was regarded as a bit of a sex bomb, this Jean Brodie is a regular nuclear warhead. This impression is reinforced by some fabulous frocks which bring headaches in more ways than one to headmistress Miss Mackay - a wonderfully subtle and sympathetic reading by Northampton-born actress Sarah Moyle. The audience shares her exasperation and reluctant admiration for the teacher.

Hywel Simons (yes, he was on Celebrity Masterchef) and John Killoran are the effectively contrasting males in the school and Brodie's life, one thinking he's a bit of a boho, the other rather more of a Gordon Brown figure. Davinia Anderson, Natalie Burt, Katie Foster Barnes and Jodie Taibi are Brodie's crème de la crème and bring off the transition from girls to young women in a nicely understated way, and the production benefits greatly from having three of these looking back as mature women on Brodie's regime.

Jodie Taibi, particularly, is terrific in the pivotal part she plays in Brodie's life. Such a seasoned performance makes it hard to believe she's only just out of drama school.

I think the show missed a trick or two over contrasting the philosophies of zealotry - student Sandy (Taibi) becomes as mindlessly accepting of the worldview of Thomas Aquinas as Brodie is of Franco and extreme Protestantism. Assistant director Annie Thomas is responsible for some insightful programme notes which give the audience lots to think and argue about.

But this is an evening of full-blooded theatre at its best. Intellectual rigour can pull the piece apart on the car ride home, but in the auditorium it's overwhelming. You won't see a better performance on any stage in Britain right now than that delivered by Anna Francolini - simply mesmerising. She's the crème de la crème.

The show, which lasts 2 hours 20 minutes runs until October 4.