Since every top politician's entire working life is in the truest sense a bravura acting performance, they should not be surprised if occasionally others are tempted to take on their roles.

In Thatcher, The Musical! we meet not one but nine performers who present us with the Iron Lady at different stages of her career. All slip easily into the part; it's hard not to when all the 'trademark' features - handbag, helmet of hair, hectoring and dogmatic diction - come so readily to hand.

Like many theatregoers, I suspect, I went to the Playhouse expecting to see Maggie mercilessly ragged. For if our first woman Prime Minister was mightily loved in some quarters, she was mightily loathed in others. The artistic community, in particular, rejected her brand of go-getting philistinism.

Yet this superbly crafted production, from the all-women group Foursight Theatre and Warwick Arts Centre, proves to be scrupulously fair. Indeed, I can pay it no greater compliment than to say the old girl herself would very likely be pleased with it.

The fairness is an inevitable function of the form adopted by directors Naomi Cooke and Deb Barnard, for what we are offered is the Thatcher story told by the woman herself, interspersed with some splendid songs by Jill Dowse.

In the opening moments, we meet Narrator Maggie (Sarah Thom). She is destined to be our companion throughout the evening, advising, cajoling and criticising the other actors on stage as they present the highlights of her remarkable political and personal odyssey.

We see the ambitious Grantham schoolgirl (Julie Baker) at home above her dad's corner shop, imbibing the no-pain, no-gain precepts that were to be the basis of her political credo. Later, with the rough edges of her provincial upbringing now smoothed away, we follow her onwards and upwards as she conquers first her party, then the country and finally the whole world.

A clever conceit is to turn all the Tory politicians about her into a yapping pack of dogs - each easily recognisable as his human model. Biddable while she is in the ascendant, they later savage her as dogs sometimes can.

But in an up-tempo ending we are reminded of the lasting Thatcher legacy. We are all Thatcherites now - Blair included. For him she has a special message, delivered shortly after her Falklands triumph, when she is seen on top of a tank in battle camouflage that even extends to her wig.

Yes, military campaigns can buy votes, she advises the Prime Minister. But it is better if one is attacked first...

It runs until Saturday.