Midnight feasts and hot water bottle fights in the dorm, stirring battles on the hockey pitch, treasure hunting among panelled corridors — wasn’t life too, too scrummy for boarding school gels in pre-war Britain? Generations of readers thrilled to the idealised picture of the developing world of female education supplied in the novels of Angela Brazil and later in comics like Bunty. Remember The Four Marys? I do — and can name them.

Rib-tickling comedy at the expense of the genre is supplied in Denise Deegan’s Daisy Pulls It Off, a West End hit of the early 1980s. Rarely seen since then — was the joke deemed to have worn a bit thin? — the play is now back to delight audiences at the Watermill Theatre. The reaction of packed houses this week suggests the revival is timely. Perhaps its celebration of all that’s good and fine in life, as exemplified by the public school ethos, chimes neatly with the arrival of a government whose leaders were early inculcated with these fine ideals.

The acting, under director Caroline Leslie, is spiffing throughout. Emerald O’Hanrahan has just the right touch of innocent enthusiasm as Daisy, the poor scholarship girl determined to make her mark at snooty Grangewood School. Amy Downham and Jaimi Barbakoff plot bitchily as her snobbish enemies, whose thorough bad-eggness would be apparent even without their detestation of games.

Happily, Daisy has a stout ally (“Jubilate!”) in best-chum Trixie (Rosie Jones) and even catches the approving eye of head girl Clare (Holly Goss), when she isn’t busy (see right) planning hockey tactics with adoring Scots deputy Alice (Claire Brown). Add capital work from Elizabeth Marsh as the stately headmistress and Robert Maskell as the sinister Russian music master and the scene is set for an evening of theatrical bliss.

Until July 10. Box office: 01635 46044 (www.watermill.org.uk).