HAIRSPRAY became known as the larger-than-life sugar-coated rock n' roll hybrid musical which justified a podgy Michael Ball donning a frock and winning an Olivier Award portraying prototype American mom Edna Turnblad, whose life is restyled by the surprise celebrity of her also overweight daughter, Tracey.

So the big question was always going to be how Liverpool's ex-Brookside superstar, Michael Starke would reprocess this transatlantic Dame Edna, for the next leg of the UK tour?

Rest easy. For the answer is with great zest and authenticity.

Edna is not a pantomime dame, nor is she a drag act. There really are women like this, and we all know them: those happy/sad creatures still capable of salvaging a youthful femininity from an out-of-control body mass which looks like it could kick-start a jumbo jet.

And there's the first rub: a show which speaks up for those who do not conform to the body beautiful.

The other strand of defiance is against the racial segregation which still riddled America a generation ago.

This is Baltimore 1962 – a year before Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech. An irony in itself, given that JFK is in the White House, and the US is on the second wave of a post-war American Dream, largely driven by the music of rebellious teenagers at the court of King Elvis.

So there we have it – the sunny feel good scenario of a TV talent show (to find Miss Hairspray), but with many a social cloud still looming on the horizon.