Our House follows the trend of Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You but is in another league from these compilation shows. Our House may be based on the songs of Madness, but it is no tribute show. It is a stylish, classy evening of intelligent story telling performed by the most energetic cast currently on the West-End stage. It is, in short, a great new British musical.

Our House follows Joe Casey through two versions of his life - the result of making a crucial decision ala Sliding Doors. As we switch between two versions of the same story, illusionist Paul Kieve has designed remarkable quick changes which sees Joe switch costumes in seconds behind umbrellas and other set pieces. While the Madness songs never hold up the action, without them Tim Firth's script is still a great story. With the possible exception of the opening to Act Two (Night Boat To Cairo/Wings of a Dove), the songs never feel like they have been crowbarred into the book, and could have been written specially.

It is true that at times things get complicated, but this is no bad thing. There's no time to sit back and relax, expect to engage your brain, be moved to tears, sometimes through empathy for the characters, but often with sheer uncontrollable laughter.

From the opening, which plays House of Fun and Our House in tandem, we know we're in for something special. Peter Darling's (Billy Elliot, Merrily We Roll Along) ingenious choreography is breathtaking, and at its most innovative in the schoolroom "Baggy Trousers" scene, in which bad guy Matt Cross (Reecey) displays his stunning dancing skills.

In the lead role of Joe, Michael Jibson displays accomplished talent and an intelligence as an actor that belies his years. Fellow graduate from Guildford School of Acting, Julia Gay plays Joe's girlfriend Sarah and is perfectly cast with a beautiful voice. Together they share one of the most moving moments in the show It Must Be Love.

As Joe's parents, both Ian Reddington and Lesley Nicol give excellent performances, but are not well cast against each other with an unconvincing age gap, which meant that Margate was far less moving than it should have been.

Also impressive in the cast are the Tameka Empson as Billie and Oliver Jackson as Lewis who are both hilarious and somewhat overshadow their respective sidekicks.

Rob Howell's smart design is great fun, resembling a cartoonish Madness video. Director Matthew Warchus' direction is tight and subtly accurate. The pace never sags, and the complicated narrative is well signposted.

The show also pokes fun at other musicals (I Am Driving In My Car pokes fun at Grease and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang while Camden Market becomes an Oliver parody). This show is London's answer to Rent. It's hip, trendy and could be what the West-End needs to attract a new younger audience, without alienating the existing theatregoers. It may not be from the Donmar or the National - but Olivier panel sit up and see the Best New Musical this year.

MARK BARLOW - MUSICAL STAGES ONLINE

There is a corner of Covent Garden that could be forever Camden Town if the feelgood fun that is this Madness-based musical runs as long as its near neighbour The Mousetrap. The newly trimmed and pacier version that has just opened certainly deserves to last as many years as its theatrical soulmate, Blood Brothers.

Indeed, the presence of Madness frontman Suggs for a 10 week stint now puts the Nutty icing on a rather terrific cake. He might mot be the greatest actor as the narrating dead father of central character Joe, but with him on stage, it is as if all is right with the world and this show.

He watches as the Sliding-Doors-type story unfolds, that of 16-year-old lad Joe who, trying to impress his girlfriend, is caught committing a minor crime. Should he run or stay? Tim Firth's likeable book follows two simultaneous different paths of good and bad - though events are not black and white as Rob Howell's cleverly changing monochrome sets imply.

Matthew Warchus's production quickly grabs the audience with those Madness classics, opening with the larky condoms odyssey of House of Fun, leading into the title song as Camden terrace opens up into an explosion of balloons and revellers and Baggy trousers with anarchic schoolkids hurtling desks across the stage. Peter Darling's choreoraphy is just joyous, and given boundless fizz by a young cast.

And talking of energy, Michael Jibson's lightning costume changes from one Joe to another still defy belief; his performance, too, is supremely assured yet, with the face of a teenage Bisto kid, he retains the necessary vulnerability when required.

For this is not just all cheeky, laddish humour, it is about adolescent angst, friendship and loyalty, the importance of family and home - notions that chime well with the more plaintive and touching side of the Madness oeuvre.

In another incarnation I described Our House as a welcome rival to Abbafest Mamma Mis! I think NW1 is now giving Sweden a real run for its money, money, money. It would be utter madness to miss it.

THE EVENING STANDARD

Too chirpy by half: that was the faintly damning verdict meted out on the Madness musical Our House when it opened last October, and the show has struggled at the box office ever since. Relaunched now after scooping the Best Musical award at the Oliviers, and with the band's beloved frontman Suggs making his West End debut for one week only in a minor but pivotal role, this time fate seems to be conspiring against its survival: the triple whammy of war, heightened fears about terrorism and a next-to-useless tube system threaten to make stay-at-homes of all of us.

Well, it would be a crying shame if this brilliant, boisterous entertainment were to fall by the wayside. There can be no musical in town more likely to lift depressed spirits, calm nerves and restore a sense of joy in London life than Tim Firth's treatment of Madness's mighty back catalogue. Together with director Matthew Warchus and choreographer Peter Darling, Firth scales the songs' nutty heights of fun and oft-overlooked depths of feeling with patriotically rousing elan.

Despite murmurings that Our House has been rejigged in response to detractors' comments, a second viewing confirms that, barring a brisker pace, very little has changed, which is precisely as it should be, because there was very little amiss in the first place.

The main drawback is that, without any prior knowledge of or affection for the tunes, a full appreciation of the show's abundant craftmanship and subtler hunour inevitably suffers. But, in centring the story on the coming-of-age dilemmas of a Camden lad called Joe, niftily cutting between versions of the life that awaits him, Firth appeals to anyone who's ever gone through the agonies and ecstasies of adolescence or pondered the price of getting ahead.

The cast - fronted by Michael Jibson as Joe, Julia Gay as his girlfriend - bristle with energy, carrying the action forward on a great surging wave of teenage hormones. To the showstopping delight of Baggy Trousers, in which school desks whiz around the stage like dodgem cars, and the quiet rapture of It Must Be Love must be added another highlight this week - the singular treat of hearing the yearning-filled ballad One Better Day delivered anew by its originator, Suggs, as Joe's dad. Standing alone on a heavy overcoat, Madness's main man lets loose soaring hopes for better times. With or without his claasy presence, this show deserves them.

THE TELEGRAPH