The musical that opened Ambassador’s highly successful Milton Keynes Theatre at the end of 1999 — before going on to a festive run at Oxford’s New Theatre — is now gracing the stage of the group’s newest venue, in Aylesbury. After a decade without Annie, it is a delight to welcome her back.

I acknowledge that not everyone shares my taste for a show often considered to be cloyingly sentimental. There is only a certain amount (possibly very little) one can take of the precocious 13-year-old with red hair and attendant shaggy dog using her charms to win over the adult world. And I agree that the winsome orphan’s success in this respect does rather stretch credibility.

But there is a hard edge to Thomas Meehan’s book — a robust and ready wit, too — that alters what might otherwise be a syrupy, sick-making experience. And the presence on stage of a gleefully nasty character with a healthy contempt for kids — I refer to orphanage boss Miss Hannigan — assists the process too.

The drunken, man-hungry harridan proves a fine comic turn for the excellent Su Pollard, long a star on the musical stage following her career-defining creation of chalet girl Peggy in TV’s Hi-De-Hi. (I recall her sensational performance in Little Shop of Horrors at the New Theatre back in 1994.)

Selected from the three available Annies for opening night, Victoria Siàn Lewis showed herself well able to belt out a melody in true Welsh fashion — most memorably composer Charles Strouse’s big number, Tomorrow. This perfectly captures the comic strip heroine’s desire for a brighter future as well as that of Depression-struck America, where the action of the show is played out.

But as with other of the vocal performances, the miking, the fine acoustic of the theatre, and the full-on work of the band under James Dunsmore combined on Tuesday to make Victoria’s contribution a little hard on the ear at times.

An impressive range of other performances include those of David McAlister as the Annie-struck billionaire entrepreneur Oliver Warbucks, Simone Craddock as his good-sort secretary, and Philip Andrew and Sophie McEwan as Miss Hannigan’s partners-in-crime, Rooster and Lily. In two of the lesser roles, Ashley Knight seizes his moment as the imperturbable — yet eventually to let his hair down — butler to Mr Warbucks, and Joe Connors gives a convincing portrait of President Roosevelt, another who warms to Annie’s charm.

Until Saturday. Box office: 0844 8717607 (www.ambassadortickets.com/aylesbury).