ohn Godber’s spirited late eighties play-within-a-play gets a kinetic airing in this student production.

Sixteen-year-olds Salty (Alex Sheppard), Hobby (Kaiya Stone) and Gail (Sarah Illingworth) are putting on an end-of-year play, as a final goodbye to Whitewall School. Throughout the show, the trio re-enact a version of their final year, playing all the characters from school bully Oggy Moxon to the boisterous deputy head, Mr Basford. But they focus on the newly-qualified Mr Nixon, whose journey from shivering wreck to their new favourite teacher, oozing confidence, is the heart of this play.

A striking feature of the play is the pioneering use of pop music, which Godber was careful to specify in the script. Between scenes we hear various FM radio songs from the seventies and eighties, giving the show a sprightly, knowing feel. It’s a technique still being used, 25 years after the play premiered, even popping up in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. This Teechers doesn’t quite get it right for technical reasons and for song choices (it’s an odd mixture of music to go with some of the play’s newly rewritten modern references) but it still adds a lot of fun.

Other elements of the production are equally high spirited. The acting is committed — all three actors deliver warm-hearted performances despite first- night nerves. Kaiya Stone excels, in particular, in her mini-role as the flustered director of the school’s latest Gilbert and Sullivan production. Godber packs a lot of dialogue (and around 20 characters) into the 75- minute running time and at times it is hard to focus on what is happening, but the scenes are so short and snappy, it barely matters.

Nostalgic and impressionistic in its scope, but ultimately spirited and warm-hearted, this production isn’t perfect but it is a lot of fun.

Until Saturday. Box office: telephone 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com).