We have become so bombarded with glitzy, razzamatazz musicals that it is a relief to return to one that really benefits from smaller-scale treatment.

Angela Edwards’ production is timely: it is 60 years since Sandy Wilson’s most successful musical comedy first appeared, before breaking West End records.

The Joseph Rowntree theatre is the ideal venue. A larger one would not have the intimacy The Boy Friend demands.

This clever pastiche of 1920s high-society styles is set on the Riviera in 1926. Polly, an heiress rounding off her education at Madame Dubonnet’s finishing school, pretends to have lowly origins.

She falls for Tony, a messenger boy whose aristocratic background is unknown to her.

The course of their love has its ups and downs, but all is resolved at a carnival ball where she plays Pierrette to Tony’s Pierrot.

Other liaisons spice the action, not least Dubonnet herself turning out to have history with Polly’s father, Percival.

Edwards is not merely director, she turns out to be a particularly dab hand at choreography. The dancing here is something really special. Based around variations of the charleston, it is consistently charming and disciplined and totally bedded down on Tuesday’s opening night. The highlight here is The Riviera, with its varied reprise.

While Phil Redding’s three-piece band sounds minimal in the overture, it proves more than enough once the action starts. Its small scale and peppy rhythms extremely apt. Quite rightly, it is only gently amplified, as are the voices, in Ollie Nash’s sound system.

Ruth Symington’s lighting subtly suggests the beach behind the multi-purpose set.

Best of all are the stylish, multi-coloured costumes, by Suzanne Ayers and Jean Wilkinson, which easily encapsulate the flappers’ era.

Within this happy environment romps a cast more youthful than York has seen in many a day. In Hannah Witcomb’s lovable Polly we sense all the doubts and delights of young love. She is well partnered by Robert Sager’s suave yet modest Tony. They bring off I Could Be Happy With You with winning, gently suppressed, delight.

Hilary Dyson’s charming Dubonnet, sporting a lovely accent, is complemented by an ever-chirpy sidekick in Kathryn Addison’s Hortense. Colin Sinclair’s Percival astutely allows himself gradually to rekindle the embers of their former affair.

Geoffrey Turner and Clare Meadley are Tony’s haughty parents, he flirtatious, she querulous – good contrast. His understandable affaire with Eloise Crawford’s very charismatic Dulcie makes a charming duet of It’s Never Too Late Too Fall In Love.

Rachael Wilkinson’s willowy Maisie also catches the eye, in her liaison with her American beau, Darren Lumby’s dashing Bobby.

It hardly matters that there are no outstanding voices in this cast. For the singing, apart from one extremely taxing duet, is invariably clear and clean and the chorus has been manifestly well trained by Sue Sykes. But the laurels must go to Angela Edwards for welding this tight-knit team into a show that really should not be missed.

York Light Opera Company in The Boy Friend. Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York. 7.30pm until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568