Anybody hoping to enjoy this stage version of Disney’s film should come wearing a cheerleader’s top, trailing a child aged 8 or 9 and, above all, harbouring a deep interest in American high-school culture. I fell short in all these areas when I caught the show at Hammersmith. In fact, I spent much of the evening wishing I could time-warp Wackford Squeers back from Nicholas Nickleby and let him loose in New Mexico’s East High. Yet I had to admit that Jeff Calhoun’s hyper-energetic production is a terrific success in its way, meaning that it proves the power of theatre by generating an intensity of prepubescent screeching and joyous dancing on seats unimaginable in the cinema.

With another production of the musical roaming the British regions, an ice-show version promised and a CD of the songs contributed by (yes, really) 13 moderately gifted tune-smiths selling millions, High School Musical is a phenomenon, a cult and, indeed, a phenomenonal cult. My hating it is no reason why you and yours shouldn’t love it.

East High is a remarkable school, a place without drugs, bullying or, it seems, any problems except whether the jocks can win the state basketball contest and the nerds stage a musical called Juliet and Romeo. I’d like to report that the school loses 100-nil and Friar Lawrence poisons the star-crossed lovers but, no, that’s not the denouement. Sadly, the only loser is a catty drama queen called Sharpay, who at least has the chutzpah to reject an admirer’s advances with “I’d rather suck the mucus from a dog’s nostrils until its skull caved in”, and even she ends up being improbably nice to her girl rival and the boy whom they both covet. These are Claire-Marie Hall’s brainy Gabriella and Mark Evans’s glamorous Troy, who have met while singing karaoke during the holidays and, now that Gabby has moved to East High, wish to take their romance further. The problem is this: Troy is the star basketball guy and his father is the coach. He also wants to play Romeo opposite Gab’s Juliet but the director, Letitia Dean’s cranky Ms Darbus, has timed the auditions to coincide with the big match. What’s to do?

With the audience’s frenzy sometimes combining with overmiking to make the words hard to hear - no bad thing, perhaps - I cannot wholly explain the solution. But the show’s existential message is that you must discover and accept your true self and “cannot let people stop you doing what you want to do because you are what you do”.

Even Dad, hitherto the sort of all-American loony who sees games and sons in the way that Patton saw war and GIs, ends by endorsing that view, giving us a consensus embracing everyone: prancing geeks, leaping jocks and audience members waving their pom-poms; all but me.

Box office: 0844 8472397

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette