LIKE wings under England manager Alf Ramsey in 1966, Arthur Wing Pinero went out of fashion, a disappearing act from former Victorian pre-eminence that means any rare revival is a risk.

The Magistrate and The Second Mrs Tanqueray occasionally re-emerge and Christopher Luscombe’s exquisitely witty restoration of Dandy Dick, the one with the betting vicar, was an artistic but not commercial success on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, last year.

Artistic director Chris Monks, a firm believer in fate, sensed that Mr Pinero was calling him from beyond the grave to direct The Schoolmistress, as not only did he have it mind already for Christmas at the SJT, but subsequently he was asked to direct a student version at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in Clapham this summer too.

Dating from 1866, this slow-to-boil farce is set at Christmas, but save for the hearth and decorated tree in Sue Condie's design, it is not a Christmas-spirited play. It could be any school holiday at Volumnia Ladies College, Portland Place that leaves the Honourable Vere Queckett (Richard Teverson), impecunious secret husband of principal Miss Dyott, in charge of three divinely dressed girls and a young governess when she moonlights as an opera diva.

From Christopher Sawalha’s firework-throwing servant Tyler to Lucas Smith’s zealously jealous new husband of runaway pupil Dinah Rankling (Rebecca Tanwen), several one-dimensional characters don’t click comically.

Teverson’s befuddled Queckett and especially Peter Macqueen’s furious, forgetful Rear Admiral Archibald Rankling inject hearty signs of life, but Sarah Moyle's Miss Dyott is left with too big a rescue act when she has her diva moment.

In a play with three acts entitled The Mystery, The Party and The Nightmare, the mystery is why Monks can’t make more of a farce where the party alas fall flats despite the game cast. The box-office nightmare of small houses surely awaits.

The Schoolmistress, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until January 4 2014. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com