The Royal Exchange has a fine tradition of unearthing classic British comedies for Christmas. This year it's a high-spirited romp by John Dighton, best known for scripting the Ealing-era classics Kind Hearts and Coronets and the Man in the White Suit. Braham Murray's production is so imbued with nostalgia that it's a wonder it's in colour.
Set in the shabby common room of a minor Hampshire boys' school, Dighton's genial farce is redolent of chalk dust and cricket pads. Yet the crusty pedagogues are shaken from their torpor by the news that they must share their accommodation with an evacuated establishment. Naturally a mix-up ensures that the new arrivals turn up with pig-tails, straw boaters and hockey sticks.
The rest is much as you might imagine: pranks, pratfalls and the inevitable misunderstandings of an unexpected parental visit. Murray and his team invest a docile script with unrelenting, anarchic energy. Several set pieces left the audience breathless with laughter.
The characterisation serves to confirm educational stereotypes rather than challenge them. The staffroom cynic Mr Billings (nicely played with floppy-limbed petulance by Simon Robson) even divides female teachers into two categories: "Group one: the Battleaxe - baleful, brainy and belligerent. Group two: the Hearty Amazon - healthy, high-school and hail-fellow-well-met." As the severe Miss Whitchurch and her bumptious sidekick Miss Gossage, Janet Henfrey and Joanna Riding turn in exemplary illustrations of categories one and two.
Philip Madoc barks and blunders amiably as the headmaster Mr Pond, while James Cash and Anna Hewson make an attractive couple who turn this experiment in mixed-sex education to romantic advantage. The Happiest Days of Your Life could well provide your happiest couple of hours this Christmas.
· Until January 17. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
