Let’s be honest, the best hope of reproducing a Baz Luhrmann film onstage would be to spike the interval drinks with mescaline. However, Strictly Ballroom has an archetypal dramatic storyline: the hero’s journey to self-realisation and revelation of beauty, in the face of an oppressive authority – the Australian Dancing Federation, which ruthlessly forbids “new steps” in ballroom routines. It’s tailor-made for the stage... in fact, it started off there, as a drama-school short, eight years before Luhrmann got to film its full-length version in 1992.

It converts just as naturally to a musical. Yet Luhrmann’s sensibility in this respect is more than instinctive. A deal of deliberation has gone into blending original songs (by a diverse stable of writers) which advance the narrative together with standards for dance routines, ranging from conventional ballroom numbers to the likes of “Time After Time”. The Australianness, too, remains firmly sewn in, to the extent that the big romantic theme, 1978 hit “Love Is In The Air”, is by those colossi of Oz-pop Vanda & Young.

Drew McOnie’s direction and choreography of this UK première is, if anything, a leetle restrained. For sure, Catherine Martin’s costumes are a sequin-fest in themselves, and it’s as camp as a global scouting jamboree, but much of the ensemble dancing is exuberant though unspectacular. Protagonist Scott’s silent, dorkish father Doug, as played by Stephen Matthews, seems not so much to be keeping a tight lid on past dramas as to have attained a Buddha-like detachment from them. For me, the electricity only really started fizzing in the Act One finale when Scott discovers that his wallflower partner Fran’s family are a cadre of hot-blooded Spanish-Australian flamenquistas (led by the simmering Fernando Mira) who teach him how to spice up his paso doble.

Sam Lips and Gemma Sutton are strong (though, again, not incandescent) as Scott and Fran. Richard Dempsey splits his skull in two with manic grins as compere JJ Silvers, Julius D’Silva as tyrannical Federation kingpin Barry Fife deserves to share equal billing with his performing toupée, and Richard Grieve as Scott’s studio head resembles the love child of Gordon Ramsay and Julian Assange. Above all, though, it shows that thoughtful craft in assembly and sheer fun can co-exist under the sparkle of a mirror-ball.

Written for the Financial Times.