Daisy Pulls It Off, by Denise Deegan, directed by Kate Blackhurst. At Canberra Rep Theatre until September 26. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN

Although Daisy Pulls It Off dates from 1983 it’s actually mining (and parodying) an earlier tradition of English stories about girls’ schools.

Think Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton and magazines such as Girls’ Crystal. But in the 1950s our school librarian at Fort Street Girls High took a dim view of anyone reading them past year 7.

I have to say, I mostly preferred the parodies. Cartoonist Ronald Searle did riotous images for the St Trinians’ girls and for the sardonic Nigel Molesworth, The Curse of St Custards.

Daisy Pulls It Off isn’t as savage as these, but it does a brisk line in examining the life of a scholarship girl, bright and cheerful Daisy Meredith (Ashleigh Butler) who arrives at a posh girls’ school where she encounters snobbery and a degree of savagery, particularly from Sybil (Alex McPherson) and Monica (Kara Taylor), a nasty pair. However, she also finds a friend in the bouncy, ever optimistic Trixie (Elaine Noon).

It’s a big all-female cast and there are gems all over it as the show charts Daisy’s survival of plots against her, paralleled by her deepening quest to solve the mystery of the school treasure that will, if found, save it from closure. There’s more to it all but it’s best to let the play reveal itself.

All this is done on a bare stage with quick suggestions of place provided by the cast moving around doors, boxes and furniture.

There’s a great gallery of old family portraits that play a part in the plot’s outcome. There’s even a school piano. The climax, a cliff rescue, uses nearly every bit of furniture and all the props going, to stage a splendidly imagined piece of heroic group action.

And the school bell rings with wonderfully increasing frantic and varied action as the show progresses.

A happy ending with a reuniting family is mandatory in this genre and it is coupled with a plea for better educational opportunities all round. Whether you’d want them all to end up in places like Grangewood School is another matter.

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