Denise Deegan’s parody of period schoolgirl fiction became an unlikely commercial hit in 1983. But, although it has now been revived with great brio as a seasonal diversion, I wonder whether it will make the same impact. Does anyone today, except a few nostalgic oldsters, still read the breathless stories of Angela Brazil on which it is palpably based?
Deegan seeks to inject some social comment into proceedings by making the eponymous heroine an impoverished scholarship girl who wins a prized place at the posh Grangewood School. Falsely accused of being a liar, a cheat and a sneak and obdurately confronting a wall of snobbery, Daisy eventually wins out. She sticks with her one true chum, proves brilliant academically, sings like an angel and caps it all by being a star on the hockey pitch and discovering lost treasure.
The tone and lingo are exactly right: this is a world of “scrummy tussles”, “inter-dormifights” and girls who are afraid, on the games field, to prove “a frightful muff”.
Paulette Randall stages it elegantly with the aid of six chairs, a stepladder and a good deal of imagination as in a wind-strewn cliff-top rescue evoked through billowing skirts. In an enthusiastic, seven-strong cast, Anna Shaffer sensibly plays it straight as the aspirational Daisy, giving everyone else licence to go over the top. Pauline McLynn is the funniest as Daisy’s staunch, brow-beating ally, but there is lively support from Clare Perkins as a deep-throated bully, Shobna Gulati as the even more sinister Sybil and Freddie Hutchins doubling as the gymslipped Belinda and a dubious Russian music teacher.
Yet a two-and-a-half-hour spoof proves rather too much of a good thing: I began to pine for the economy of the stage version of The 39 Steps or, going even further back, the brisk, schoolgirl monologues of the late, much-lamented Arthur Marshall. Deegan also seems visibly enthralled by the very thing she is satirising. The play ends up as a plea for widening the access to public schools without ever questioning their legitimacy in the modern age. Despite the double entendre in the title, the play is clean as a whistle and harmless fun, but somewhat relentless in its gaiety.
- At Park theatre, London, until 13 January. Box office: 020-7870 6876.
