Regular visitors to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the past eight years, St Edward’s School’s Cup and Dagger Productions heads north again next month with a gripping new play to delight punters.

Specially written by Siofra Dromgoole and directed by David Aldred, St Edward’s head of academic drama, If It Didn’t Matter is arresting theatre – well supplied with character and incident – that makes ideal Fringe fare.

Its central character – one can hardly say heroine – is arsey teenager Hal (Evie Faber on winning form) with plenty to be arsey about.

She is a rebel with sufficient cause, perhaps, in the death from cancer of her mother, though younger sister Bella (Alicia Bouaziz)appears to have taken this in her stride – a powerful stride, too, as she is a kick-boxer.

Hal kicks metaphorically at all about her, adults especially.

She is the despair of her poor dad (Ben Courtney-Guy), thwarting his expectations in a manner paralleled by the historic character bearing her name.

Classroom study of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, wherein Prince Hal’s youthful indiscretions are chronicled, supplies a key scene in the play.

The discomfiture at Hal’s hands of English teacher Jane (Victoria Iliffe) – clearly an inspirational figure who does not deserve this – is effectively handled.

So, too, are scenes in which the truculent teenager stoutly resists the attempts by therapist Diane (Milly Bracey) to get to the root of her troubles.

Her interaction with her contemporaries always rings true, too, especially that with her best pal Eliza (Selena Thompson) and the doting Ned (Matt Wilkins).

Helping in the creation of an authentic school atmosphere are Hal’s classroom colleagues Penny (Phoebe Taylor), Jo (Josie Peach) and Kate (Aniella Weinberger) whose mother Fiona (Katya Jacobs) has an unreciprocated crush on Hal’s grieving dad.

Presented with welcome physicality and live music from Henry Parsons, this is a show – more comic than so far stated – not to be missed.

If It Didn’t Matter is at the North Wall’s Drama Studio on Friday, August 2 (box office: 01865 319450, thenorthwall.com) and at The Space @ Niddry Street, Edinburgh, from August 5 to 9.

CHRISTOPHER GRAY 4/5