“Not all wars are won with weapons. Some are won in borrowed boots and a smirk.”

Even among Terry Pratchett’s anarchic body of work, Monstrous Regiment has always felt like the novel that smuggled a manifesto under its uniform. Yes, it’s full of pratfalls, wordplay, and trousers-based humour — but lurking beneath is a flintier heart, a piece of satire aimed squarely at the machinery of war and the absurdity of those who run it. This new stage production, mounted in the magnificent Main Hall of The Edinburgh Academy, understands that double pulse entirely. It doesn’t dilute it. It distils it.

Borogravia, the fictional setting, is a country where fanatical adherence to tradition trumps reason — a land clinging to archaic rules like a drowning man clings to driftwood. Here, Polly Perks cuts her hair, becomes “Oliver,” and enlists in search of her missing brother. She is joined by a band of misfits: fellow women in disguise, a caffeine-dependent vampire, a troll, and the sort of ill-suited recruits who look like they’d lose a fight with the recruitment form. Together, they march towards a war no one’s quite sure is still being fought, under the gaze of commanders too blind to see what’s in front of them — even if it were to bayonet them in the knees.

Act One is patient, almost deceptively so. It sets the pieces, lets the characters breathe, and allows the humour to percolate under the surface. Then Act Two arrives, and the temperature shifts. The jokes grow teeth. The satire, once gentle, becomes surgical. Those throwaway laughs about regulation socks and misplaced buttons open out into sharp reflections on identity, loyalty, and the inbuilt arrogance of leadership. It’s a rare pleasure to feel a comedy deepen in real time without losing its pace.

The production’s visual restraint is part of its charm. There are no projections, no blinding spotlights — just the unvarnished grandeur of the Main Hall, lit in what appears to be near daylight from the room’s own fixtures. The focus stays exactly where it should: on the performances. The costumes are top notch, and the cast are great too. Amelia Berry anchors the piece as Polly with quiet steel and warmth. Ben Blow’s Sergeant Jackrum is a scene-stealing study in bluster and heart. And Caitlan Carter’s Maladict, with a performance that could teach a masterclass in the art of stillness in the background, acting all the time when not front and centre, ensures that even in silence, the vampire is in the room.

What’s striking is the production’s balance between fidelity and freshness. There’s an evident love for the source material, but it’s never reverent to the point of paralysis. It knows what to preserve — the irreverence, the humanism, the sideways look at power — and where to nudge the material into sharper contemporary resonance.

The result is a show that manages to be riotously funny, quietly moving, and unexpectedly urgent. Pratchett’s comedy has always had a way of sneaking truth in under the laughter. This adaptation does the same — no wasted motion, no false notes, and a reminder that sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is put on a pair of borrowed boots and ask the wrong questions.

And perhaps that is where this staging finds its real triumph: in treating fantasy not as escapism, but as camouflage for something more subversive. Beneath the absurdities, we recognise our own uniforms, our own unquestioned rules, our own small Borogravias — places where change is feared until it is inevitable. To make an audience laugh at that is easy. To make them leave wondering about the boots on their own feet is something rarer. And here, in the echoing hall of an Edinburgh school, Straw Moddie have done it again with another wonderful production.