Though it won a best musical award on its appearance in 1977, Peter Nichols prefers to describe this fictionalised recollection of his experiences during National Service as a play with songs.

Nichols, who served in an army entertainment unit which also included the late Kenneth Williams, has created an affectionate tribute to an age of variety which was already acquiring its last legs by the late 1940s. At the same time, it reflects on the social hypocrises which built the Empire.

Private Flowers, a naive youngster from the West Country, might stand for the young Nichols, although his behaviour as the plot develops is far from beyond reproach.

Transferred to SADUSEA (Song and Dance Unit South East Asia), he finds himself thrust into camp life, in every sense.

Bizarre though it may be to find a Brummie quartermaster with authentic soldier’s vocabulary dishing out army-issue make-up alongside sergeants’ stripes, it seems merely an extension of the Army’s general absurdity.

That the unit is a rallying point for homosexuals is entirely lost on its commanding officer Major Flack, who is in some respects as innocent as Flowers, despite his belligerent Christian zeal.

However, Flack (a fine performance from Alan McMahon) is sufficiently crazed to use his innocuous company of misfits as a lure for the communists. It is typical of Nichols’ plays to juxtapose knockabout comedy with awkward moments, and when a Union Jack-draped coffin appears on stage the connection between late 1940s Malaya and current conflicts suddenly seems very direct. But while you won’t miss the more serious references, this is mostly a breezy entertainent. It is led, in a winning performance, by Joe Alessi as the extraordinarily camp Acting Captain Terri Dennis, whose show-stopping routines include impersonations of Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward and Carmen Miranda.

Where this revival, directed by Ian Brown for the West Yorkshire Playhouse in a co-production with the Rep, really scores is in dispensing with a separate band and having the actors play the instruments. It makes for a seamlessly theatrical love letter to theatre, as it soldiers on in the most trying of circumstances.

Running time: Two hours, 50 minutes. Until November 8.

Terry Grimley