THIS is the first London production of Frank Loesser’s great musical since Richard Eyre famously revived it at the National in 1982, or at least since he revived that revival 14 years later; and I wish I could say that it has as much exuberance and jubilant joie de vivre.

But then, if I can’t, it may be because nostalgia plays funny tricks on the memory. Michael Grandage hasn’t the vast acreage of the Olivier at his disposal and anyway opts for a sparer, simpler staging. A visit to the Piccadilly will bring you terrific music, great fun, one or two excellent dance numbers and, at the head of a consistently decent cast, no less charismatic a figure than Ewan McGregor.

Here’s a silly but goodnatured tale of warm-hearted gamblers, well-meaning salvationists and, in McGregor’s Sky Masterson, a warm-hearted gambler who actually ends up a well-meaning salvationist. If you wanted to be earnest, you could say that the theme is the tendency of guys to fall for dolls who want to change them and, in most cases, of dolls to fail to change the guys they fancy. But who feels earnest when they’re humming along with Luck be a Lady or A Bushel and a Peck or, most exhilarating of all, Siddown, Siddown, You’re Rocking the Boat?

What, then, of McGregor’s Masterson, who gambles on his ability to lure Jenna Russell’s sweetly sedate young bible-thumper to Havana and wins both the bet and the lady? What surprised me was his ability not just to talk his songs, but to sing them, and sing them smoothly and tunefully. What surprised me a lot less was his laid-back urbanity and, when he’s shooting craps, his equally effortless sense of command. Give this Sky a dramatic climax and he’ll gleam, like his namesake in high summer.

Yet it’s the musical’s subplot that is the most rewarding. Can Nathan Detroit, who has been engaged to Miss Adelaide for aeons, indefinitely postpone the wedding while managing to organise the crap game she wants him to forgo? Here, he’s played by a gangling, shambling, slightly goofy Douglas Hodge with the harried grin you might expect of someone who is, in effect, trying to juggle, do back-somersaults and walk the tightrope all at once.

I’m not sure if Jane Krakow-ski, a Broadway star imported to play Adelaide, has quite the wit of Imelda Staunton, who took the role in 1996; but she brings great charm and a fine voice to the business of sending up the character’s good- natured dopiness. There’s even a touch of pathos in her delivery of the celebrated song in which she laments her unwed years in terms of colds, flu and hypochondriacal symptoms.

Unlike Eyre, Grandage somewhat demythologises this “musical fable for Broadway”, as Loesser and librettists Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows dubbed the show. The gamblers’ suits are grey and less than smart, their fedoras mostly dull brown. They want to be rich but, apart from a Capone parody visiting from Chicago, they’re far from that. The New York behind them is a vague sprinkling of thinly lit skyscrapers. And the Cuban bar in which Russell’s Sarah has three, four, five drinks too many is a sweaty, unglamorous place.

Yet that doesn’t stop some strong, macho dance before the definitive crap-game in the Times Square sewers or prevent some remarkably elastic bodies swaying, swinging, slithering and going bottoms-up and heads-down in a Havana mix of tango and rumba. Credit Rob Ashford’s choreography for ensuring that here, at least, there’s some Broadway pizzazz.