The appeal of La Cage aux Folles isn’t hard to fathom. This flamboyant farce manages the unusual feat of being both louche and touching. “It’s all about love,” says Albin, who in the guise of dramatically inept chanteuse Zaza has the crowds flocking to her lover Georges’s St Tropez nightclub. Of course, it’s not all about love — there are windmilling nipple tassles, grown men in vertiginous heels and some eye-watering dance moves — but Albin’s assessment has a kernel of truth: La Cage aux Folles promotes love in all its tones and hues. 

The cosily pink ménage of Albin and Georges is threatened when the latter’s son, Jean-Michel, reveals that he is engaged to Anne, daughter of the Riviera’s most conservative politician. Jean-Michel has asked Anne’s parents to dinner: cue much hand-wringing as he and his father embark on the thorny business of clearing out Albin’s closet (pun intended) and concealing all evidence of the couple’s less than orthodox domestic arrangements. 

It’s a set-up straight out of Feydeau, to which Roger Allam and Philip Quast, taking over the leads from Graham Norton and Steven Pacey, bring tremendous verve. Physically and sartorially, Allam’s Albin resembles a cross between those two legendary Dames, Edna Everage and Barbara Cartland, yet he endows the part with not just high preposterousness, but also an unexpected nobility.

Quast, returning to the role of Georges that he had in the original production at the Menier Chocolate Factory, is by turns regal, charming, masculine and vulnerable. The chemistry between them is superb.

Equally thrilling are the Cagelles, Albin’s support troupe. Yet there are a few passages that drag amid the camp extravagance. Jerry Herman’s songs, though performed with attack, are a little uneven, and sometimes the ensemble scenes, which mix Busby Berkeley glamour with gymnastic madness, feel too noisy. 

Still, Harvey Fierstein’s book is packed with laughs, as well as cocking a pretty shrewd snook at homophobia, and director Terry Johnson laces the action with glitz and some moments of real pathos. Early on, Georges promises his nightclub audience “only champagne from now until the finale”. It’s a pledge amply fulfilled by this joyous, raunchy and affecting musical.

Until 9 January, 2010. Information: 020 7432 4220.