Denise Deegan's jolly 1983 comedy tells the story of plucky schoolgirl Daisy and her battle with the beastly bullies of Grangewood School for Girls in 1927.
Daisy, you see, is a scholarship student - the first scholarship student at public school Grangewood - which means she is poor, and, according to some, of dubious morality. When Daisy enters the upper fourth at Grangewood not only does she have to contend with hockey and tennis, jam and cake, and a total ban on casual hobnobbing with boys, she is also subjected to the hateful actions of Sybil, the school snob who thinks Daisy should return to the Elementary school whence she came.
But things aren't so frightful. Daisy has the help of her newfound chum Trixie, who proves herself most capital in counteracting Sybil's perfectly ghastly pranks against Daisy. Prefects and hockey stars Clare and Alice are immensely reasonable, headmistress Miss Gibson is uncommonly topping and Daisy seems to come top of the class in just about everything. Not only that, but Clare's late grandfather has hidden treasure at Grangewood and it is up to Daisy and Trixie to find it before the Russian music teacher does, thus saving Grangewood, England and the entire Empire from the Bolsheviks. Can they pull it off? And more importantly, can they do so without breaking any school rules?
Of course they get themselves in a beastly funk along the way, but director Nadine Hanwell ensures that the kiddies keep up quite a pace. There is no set to speak of - at times laughably so - nor much in the way of music and lighting, so it is left to the ripping cast to keep things entertaining, which they do with barely more than a bed sheet, a frog and a hockey stick. Lucy Austin makes the perfectly plucky Daisy entirely endearing, despite her talent for everything from singing to poetry, hockey to knot-tying. Rebecca Haigh is immensely jolly as Trixie and Fiona Domenica is most awfully good at being the frightful Sybil.
This transfer from Baron's Court production may not have all the lollipops of a West End show, but, taken in the jolly spirit in which it is intended, Hanwell's production is nothing short of top hole.
Optima Magazine
Reviewed by Jill Glenn
It is – shockingly – over 25 years since the original West End production of Daisy Pulls It Off. In the terminology of the ‘gels’ on stage, it was a ripping success, continuing for nearly 1200 performances.
The Arts Theatre version, from small-scale company Nadine’s Window, is much more modest, but it has all the energy and humour that I remember from that first run. The play has dated, of course, being so many years further on from the time frame it references, but you rapidly stop being alienated by words like ‘topping’ and ‘spiffing’ and ‘rotter’, and find yourself drawn into the increasingly implausible plot: will Daisy, new scholarship girl at exclusive Grangewood School, overcome the hostility of her classmates? Will she find the hidden treasure? Will she sneak on the bullies, or will she keep the honour code that they think she (ex-elementary school, don’t you know?!) can’t possibly understand?
It’s billed as a parody – which, of course, is true – but it also offers some food for thought. The programme notes offer some useful pointers to life in 1927: that girls could marry at 12, for example, that not all women had the vote, that the professions were only just opening up to women, and that for bright poor girls, like Daisy, education was the only escape from ‘horrid, menial work’. Her focus on doing well, on making her mother and four little brothers proud of her, is understandable (and I’m sure there’s many a teacher of today’s 14 year olds who’d like as much commitment from their pupils). The honour code impedes her, because she values it (too?) highly, but there’s something really rather enviable about this world in which trust mattered so much, and you really knew who your friends were.
Lucy Austin as Daisy was excellent, and thoroughly believable; she reminded me of one of my nieces, long grown up now: all that teenage angst and enthusiasm. Most of the cast managed to keep their performances just the right side of caricature. There’s no character development, no interesting psychological depths to explore, but all these actors, women in their twenties playing teenage girls, managed to create believable people in this plot-driven piece. It was all light and bright and amusing, just as it should be.
I enjoyed this tremendously. Yes, I’m sure that there are much worthier plays around, but this was good, wholesome fun, and a welcome dose of escapism. Rehearsals must have been a riot.
Whether you’d enjoy it quite so much if you weren’t a secret fan of old-fashioned school stories, I’m not sure – but if you still harbour any nostalgia for the Abbey Girls, the Chalet School or the extensive output of Angela Brazil, then Daisy Pulls It Off is the acceptable public face of an indulgent private passion.
Run along, now…
British Theatre Review
The Nadine's Window production of this perky, plucky, loveable little play first played at Baron's Court Theatre in 2008 and 2009, and now comes to the West End for a short run. It is not quite a children's play but is clearly aimed at family audiences, and teenage girls in particular; and it is so unashamedly whole-hearted and lacking in cynicism that it would be hard to begrudge it any success.
It is 1927, and Daisy Meredith, "honourable, courageous, and straight in all things" as she cheerfully announces, is a bright elementary school pupil who has become the first to win a scholarship to the elite Grangewood School for Girls, normally reserved for children of the moneyed upper classes. She is greeted coldly by many of the snobbish pupils of this most upright institution, but through a year of twists, turns, adventures and spiffing japes she wins over the hearts of all with her decency, honesty and good old-fashioned British pluck.
It really is as straightforward as that. We may smile at the tidal wave of jolly-hocky-sticks cliches that forms the dialogue - all spiffing times and utter rot and mangled French and Latin mottos ("Jubilate!", "Scooterons-nous!"). And the schoolgirls tend to be defined by a single character trait that determines their role in Daisy's journey, but they cheerfully announce as much themselves when they march on stage and introduce themselves. This is not really a send-up: it's much more like a loving homage to the form.
The attention given to the incidental events of the school year - music lessons, dances in the great hall, hockey matches - recalls boarding school narratives such as Harry Potter, and suggests that Deegan wants us to become immersed in this world and care about all its details, whether they are relevant to the central plot or not. It's a nice intention, and I can see teenage girls enjoying it; and it did recall for me every last detail of the Enid Blyton books I devoured as a child. Deegan scatters the story with countless lovely specifics, particularly in the girls' idiosyncratic speech, and she paces the narrative deftly. She also manages to acknowledge the enclosed nature of the world that is a boarding school, with one of the sixth-formers, soon to graduate, daring to voice the fear that "the real world may not be quite like Grangewood". Indeed not.
But it's a difficult play to place: being far too gentle to be a parody, and at the same time far too stuffed with moments of self-parody to be taken seriously as a drama. It is put forward as a play addressing class prejudice and bullying, and it does provide a nicely feelgood ending in which the good girl through strength of character overcomes her tormentors. Most interestingly, it harks back to a word where honour, honesty and decency were not ambiguous or outdated concepts but the currency of everyday life. It's a refreshing thing to see on stage.
But there are inevitably some problems with this: the school's code of conduct forbids "sneaking", meaning that Daisy cannot tell teachers or parents about her persecution, and it's only really through lucky circumstance that all turns out well for her. It's hard to relate this to modern-day bullying. Also associated with the characters' moral system is a lot of rhetoric about England and Empire, which we can laugh at now of course; but it produces questionable moments. There is a mysterious Russian teacher at Grangewood, whom the girls at first assume is after the school's hidden treasure "to help his Bolshevik friends"; but once it's revealed that he is an aristocrat who fled the Russian Revolution, all is well. For a play that wants to hymn progressive social values, some of the girls' beliefs and assumptions go weirdly unchallenged.
In terms of providing positive examples to a young audience, one of the best aspects of the play is Deegan's commitment to representing strong women. This is a world almost entirely without men, and so it almost goes without saying that the women will be strong, sensible, authoritative, and fulfill every role that this society-in-miniature requires. There are as many hierarchies and power structures as any military academy could boast - from dorm monitors to form captains to prefects to head girls - and the girls are judged on their sporting prowess at least as much as their academic record. They are practical, competent, independent-minded and tomboyish, and they have never dreamt of making sexual attractiveness any part of their identity. It's a bygone age, certainly; but it's oddly pleasing to see Deegan present such a pure feminist vision.
Nadine Hanwell's simple staging does a lot with a minimal set, and keeps the action moving along nicely for the most part. The cast inject a lot of life into the proceedings, with Lucy Austin good as the irrepressibly perky and charming Daisy, and Rebecca Haigh giving fine support as her flyaway best friend. All power to them.
Daisy Pulls it Off
Set in 1927 in a girls' boarding school, Denise Deegan's schoolgirl romp, transferring to the West End after two successful runs at Baron's Court Theatre, delivers a healthy dose of good, clean fun, while poking fun at the absurdity of the British class system.
More Enid Blyton's Malory Towers than St Trinian's, these girls' idea of rebellion is to hold a midnight feast and hot water bottle fight, and the only reference to sex is a passing reprimand from the headteacher (Maxine Scholfield) to girls talking to boys outside the school who are not family members.
The story follows the trials and tribulations of elementary whizz kid Daisy, who, as the first girl to gain a scholarship to Grangewood School for Girls, has many prejudices to overcome from fellow schoolgirls and teachers. They believe she is morally bereft and will bring down the tone of the school.
Fiona Domenica plays the horrid snob Sybil, who with her ditzy side-kick Monica (Jennifer Page), bullies Daisy mercilessly. Page embraces her role with comic zeal, especially when she needs to be rescued from the beach.
But Daisy does find a dear friend in the spiffing Trixie (Rebecca Haigh), who is so excitable, she can't stop jigging about, while the older girls Clare (Emma Scholes) and Alice (Joanne Gale) lend a sympathetic ear.
With cheers of "jubilate", schoolgirl crushes and jolly hockey sticks, along with a search for treasure and the mysterious disappearance of Mr Thompson, Deegan's melodramatic and witty script is a ripping good yarn, and, in true Blyton fashion, all the loose ends are tied up neatly to comic effect.
Considering some of the scenes involve pacing school corridors and playing hockey, the cast do well with what little space they have, but the barren set lets the play down somewhat - there is room for more imaginative use of scenery, especially in the girls' dorms and final party scene.
DAISY PULLS IT OFF
by Denise Deegan
Directed by Nadine Hanwell
Arts Theatre
19 January - 6 february 2010
A review by Jay Richards for EXTRA! EXTRA!
At 7.29pm in the aisles of the Arts Theatre, neatly dressed schoolgirls welcome the audience with beaming smiles and a comely demeanour. As we take our seats, we notice a large crest dominating the austere stage (black drapes and simple wooden chairs), demarcating the auditorium in no uncertain terms as ‘Grangewood School’. When the headmistress addresses us, we sit up straighter. What follows is a lesson in delicious comic irony.
Denise Deegan’s Daisy Pulls it Off charts the tribulations of the eponymous heroine Daisy, a scholarship pupil making the leap from elementary school (a working class primary school) to the fictional Grangewood private school for girls in the late 1920s. Yes, jolly hockey sticks abound, but the play is also a considered study of class conflict and captures a turbulent period in this country’s social development. Daisy faces not only the catty snobbery of upper-class students from wealthy families but also the pressure to represent an entire body of people, hitherto barred from the citadels of expensive education.
Director Nadine Hanwell deserves top marks for unravelling a perfectly puzzling paradox: Edwardian over-statement, colossally out of fashion, played with straight-faced Edwardian earnestness makes, surprise, surprise, for a ripping good show. Instead of a trite history lesson or saccharine gaze through rose-tinted spectacles, the tongue goes past the plums in the mouth firmly into the cheek and the laughs come thick and fast.
We gulp down the cliché like so much iced ginger beer; the stock characters, like the self-proclaimed ‘enigmatic Russian music teacher‘, we scoff like fresh club sandwiches. Deegan spoons on the parody in great dollops: of course there is hidden treasure somewhere at Grangewood; of course Daisy the underdog bests her privileged fellow students in the classroom and on the sports field; of course she is resourceful and unfailingly magnanimous in victory.
As Daisy, Lucy Austin is superb, wringing her hands in exasperation when thwarted, before whirling on to the next scheme like an exuberant dervish. She gets excellent support from Rebecca Haigh, whose frantic Trixie fairly tears around the stage, pigtails pursuing close behind. Senior girls Claire and Alice, played by Emma Scholes and Joanne Gale, respectively, are appropriately matriarchal, bearing the oh-so-heavy burden of leadership with deep sighs and furrowed brows. Jennifer Page’s lollipop-licking, sycophantic brat Monica is pitch-perfect (think Violet Elizabeth Bott, Just William fans) while Fiona Domenica’s dowdy Sybil, scion of the moneyed few, provides an effectively effete foil to Daisy’s ‘go get ‘em’ pragmatism.
In a moment of illumination that rises above parody, Sybil correctly observes that ‘Grangewood is a mirror for the world’. Indeed, power structures, obedience to authority and isolation are also features of the universe that exists beyond the school gate. At every turn, this show compliments our worldly knowledge and grown-up sense of humour, forcing us to re-contextualise the memories of our school days as we revisit them here. Looking back, our earnestness was hilarious, Deegan seems to be saying. But in Daisy Pulls it Off, as well as splitting our sides, she offers a compelling account as to why, at the time, it felt like we were playing for keeps.
Watching Daisy Pulls It Off is a double exercise in nostalgia. Firstly of the false but infinitely enjoyable kind, the celebration of the jolly hockey sticks lifestyle of a 1920s girls' boarding school - familiar from books, experienced by few. Secondly, and this conjures up more real and embarrassing memories, Denise Deegan's pastiche is a play I performed in during my own school days.
This wouldn't warrant mention except that I am not alone. Thanks to its large cast and simple staging, Deegan's play is hugely popular with schoolgirl drama groups, though rarely revived professionally despite winning the equivalent of an Olivier Award at its 1983 premiere.
Director Nadine Hanwell's production transfers to the Arts Theatre from Barons Court with a stirling report. In that sense, it's rather like its heroine Daisy Meredith, an elementary (i.e. state school) pupil who wins a scholarship to the exclusive Grangewood School for Girls, only to be met with snobbery and suspicion by teachers and pupils alike. Never mind that Daisy is top of the class, sings like an angel and proves a dab hand with a hockey stick - this is 1927, when privately educating an East End girl is social experiment of the most dangerous kind.
Hanwell and her gymslipped cast have a lot of fun with this, faces beautifully straight for every fresh funk or feast the girls find themselves in. Japes and crushes abound - "just like they do in schools in books" says Daisy breathlessly - and fans of Dimsie and The Chalet School will recognise the reference points.
Too often, however, the play veers into Enid Blyton territory (and not in a good way), its characters undeveloped and set-pieces stagey. The big plot reveal is swallowed in a sound-cue and only an underlying channel of anti-Communist feeling - "It's probably to help his Bolshevik friends" observes Daisy of sneaky Russian teacher Mr Scoblowski - adds spice.
The actors do make the most of what they've got. Lucy Austin is pluck personified as the heroine, Rebecca Haigh an excellent foil as best chum Trixie and Jennifer Page all lisp and spittle as resident toadie Monica. But it's hard to get past the notion that Deegan's play has dated, not from its 1920s setting so much as its early 80s staging. These days we want our pastiche served with punch and sadly Daisy is just too squeaky clean to pack it.
6-7 Great Newport Street
London
WC2H 7JB
Transport Leicester Square
|
Underground: Leicester Square (Northern/Piccadilly lines)/Covent Garden (Piccadilly line) Newport Street, China Town.
Please note that parking in central London can be expensive, please use public transport if possible.
|
|
Access |
|
Wheelchair Access: Yes |