Another summer, another terrific small-scale musical revival from the Watermill, directed by Craig Revel Horwood. Based on the true story of Pools winner Viv Nicholson, this rags-to-riches – and back again – tale is Cinderella with a twist, a morality tale for our own spend-today-and-pay-tomorrow age. Steve Brown and Justin Greene's 1998 musical is big and brassy like its heroine, Viv, the Yorkshire miner's wife whose husband Keith scooped in 1961 the equivalent of more than £5m. It works well here as a chamber piece performed by actor-musicians. The sense that we're watching a memory play is heightened: in the final refrain of Roll Back the Years, the elderly Viv reaches back towards her past as if remembering everything she's lost.

Having two Vivs, the older and younger versions, constantly on stage works particularly well, and Brown's score – mixing styles and influences from English folk to popular music of the period – is a pleasure. I always wondered why this show didn't enjoy greater West End success. On second viewing, I feel that may be due to its linear structure, and that, while it has some terrifically upbeat moments – climaxing in the closing first act number, Spend Spend Spend! – the pungent but downbeat second half doesn't have the feelgood factor that West End musicals demand.

Nonetheless, it pulls the heartstrings, and this revival's pocket-sized nature magnifies the emotion and plays the comedy cannily, even if the design is overbusy. In a strong cast, the cracked maturity of Karen Mann's older Viv provides an aching contrast with Kirsty Hoiles's young Viv, and Greg Barnett is superb as Keith. A little treasure.

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If you are an Amateur Dramatic Society enquiring about performing the musical

Spend Spend Spend, please contact

Email:Samuel French Ltd