31 - Daisy pulls it off, Bench Theatre at The Spring

It was all jolly hockey sticks in this brilliant production of a silly play about young gels at school.

I have a real nostalgia for cheerful tales of boarding schools and midnight feasts. As a childhood Enid Blyton fan and a current Harry Potter enthusiast nothing cheers me up like a jolly story of treasure hunting in a boarding school.

Mark Wakeman really knows his stage comedy and the clever staging here was a case in point. He understands that we don't want to hang around waiting for the next laugh so scene changes were accomplished with the blink of an eye, hilarious grumpy cameos by the backstage crew served as book cases in the library and portraits in the great hall.

The character of Daisy Meredith, plucky scholarship girl who is good at literally everything, is hard to fall in love with. I'm sure I would have hated her at school - no-one should be good at lessons AND sport. Luckily Beth Evans played her with such warmth and the whole play was so tongue in cheek we were all rooting for her anyway. This was helped by the brilliantly evil Draco Malfoy-esque snob Sybil Burlington (Fern Bicheno) and crony Monica Smithers (Rosie Carter) who were great fun to hate.

Tamsin Halford really stole the show as Daisy's poetic, scatty friend Trixie Martin. Her state of perpetual wide-eyed excitement was infectious and the way she ran on and off stage was especially funny, it really reminded me of how my own sister Daisy used to run around.

The whole cast was really brilliant but my other personal favourites were the dynamic duo of head girl Clare Beaumont (Alice Corrigan) and her friend Alice (Jo Gardner.) They took what could have been the duller parts of the play and made them the best with terrific over the top poses and speeches, they could have stepped straight out of a comic.

What made this the best fun to watch was the feeling that everyone on stage was enjoying themselves immensely. I hope Bench Theatre finds more plays in the future to showcase this amazing amount of young female talent. Such fun.