Tracy makes an unlikely political leader, she's more interested in backcombing her roots and swooning over Corny Collins Show star Link Larkin (Liam Doyle) than climbing on a soap box, but her reaction to the idea of segregation – that it's basically stupid – is one you would expect most people today to share. And they're a pretty enlightened bunch anyway, with only helium-voiced Amber Von Tussell (Clare Halse), the pint-sized Barbie who is Tracy's rival for Link's affections and her mother, a Cruella de Vil in lemon yellow, really in favour of maintaining the status quo.

Stepping in for Laurie Scarth, who was unable to perform due to sickness, understudy Tree was an energetic and likeable Tracy. But the limelight belonged to Liverpudlian duo Michael Starke and Les Dennis, playing the teen's parents.

Dennis, as Wilbur Turnblad, won a spontaneous round of applause from the audience simply for walking on stage, but even he appeared a supporting role to Starke's Edna.

Starke, in a role he hopes will open other doors in his career, was superb as Tracy's reclusive mother who discovers her inner diva. Dressed in a walk-in wardrobe's worth of costumes and wigs, he was surprisingly feminine and played the part with real sensitivity and a lightness of touch.

In the end, it wasn't the big choreographed dance numbers that provided the most entertaining moments, but Edna's and Wilbur's duet, Timeless to Me, which they barely got through without collapsing in giggles.