The Girls of Slender Means at The Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh

The characters of five girls who live in a London boarding house immediately after the war in 1945 are beautifully drawn in Gabriel Quigley's exciting reworking of the novella by Edinburgh's own Muriel Sparks.

Dripping with Sparks' signature wit, The Girls of Slender Means charts their lives as secretaries in London, while still living off food and clothing coupons and sharing one designer dress, loaned to one of the girls by her aunt.

Originally written in the sixties, when the likes of Mary Quant and Biba revolutionised fashion, I do feel Caitlin Wiedenhof's colourful costumes give a nod to what was to come, but set against a grey backdrop of bombed out buildings, they provide a sharp contrast and perhaps illustrate the fun the girls are having and the bright futures before them now that the war is over.

It's not all fun and games, however. Most of the play is set in those early days when Jane, the most studious of the girls, becomes close to anarchist intellectual Nicholas Farringdon.

Fast forward a few years and Jane, now an editor on a fashion magazine, finds out that he had become a Jesuit priest and had just been assassinated in Haiti. And so we have flashbacks of their times together, enjoying freedom at last but still scarred by the Second World War.

Each of the six actors give well-rounded performances under the directorship of Roxana Silbert. We came away thinking we know them and what they go through, both good and bad. Who would think that what is basically a clutch of girls gossiping and having fun could be so entertaining and yet so profound.

Image: Mihaela Bodlovic

The Girls of Slender Means is at The Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh until May 4

Box Office: 0131 248 4848

lyceum.org.uk