LEGALLY BLONDE, THE MUSICAL

Ohmigod you guys! Here at Time Out, we don't bend and snap for every over-manicured Broadway import we see. Personally, I've felt for many years that cheerleaders, Chihuahuas and the colour pink ought to be reclassified as cutesy forms of persistence. But Jerry Mitchell's pepped-up, candy-coloured hymn to sisterhood - in which Malibu Barbie Elle Woods takes on the overpriviledged preppies at Harvard and wins - is, like, the best legal high in town.

You'll be totally psyched to find that this film-turned-show is no zombie retread of a money-spinning format. Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin's music and lyrics give the movie an irresistible makeover: highlights are the super-smart rhyming dialogues that actually propel the plot, and rhythmic, catchy tunelets, surely destined to launch a thousand ringtones.

The British cast is flawless. The excellent Sheridan Smith is neither super-famous nor super-gorgeous but her adorable performance as Elle Woods is so full of heart, lungs, self-deprecating comedy and soul that it deserves to make her a huge star. Duncan James (of boyband Blue) is sleekly convincing as the guy Elle follows from California to Havard Law School, the heartless Wasp pretty boy Waner Huntingdon III. 'Strictly...' winner Jill Halfpenny is poignantly good as Elle's skanky, generous hairdresser, Paulette. And the sub-plot provides a wonderful excuse for a gratuitously hot walk-on from Chris Ellis-Stanton as Paulette's new love god: a delivery guy who dresses like a boy scout, flexes like a Chippendale and twirls like Lord of the Dance.

Despite the leads' excellence, this is an ensemble triumph. Even the love story is just a conventional showcase for 'Legally Blonde's true ideals: friendship, hard work and honesty. Elle's gloriously trashy shades of cerise are the banner of a kindly, ultra-camp world. Here in pinktopia even Elle's Delta Nu sorority of Californian cheerleaders are a ditzy chorus of supportive sisters, never the hard-candy superbitches of campus cliché.

Mitchell's aerobic, non-stop choreography brings all the show's tribes. Every scene pops with energy. And when Elle, her ex, her dastardly Prof and her fellow legals have to defend exercise-queen Brooke Wyndam on a murder charge, triumphant numbers ensue.

Prettier and wittier than 'Hairspray': younger and hotter than 'Jersey Boys', and glamper than 'Priscilla'; the West End has a new attorney-in-chief, and she is tressed to impress.