@ King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 16 Apr 2016; and
@ Perth Concert Hall, from Tue 26 – Sat 30 Apr 2016

To anyone born after 1980 a refresher is in order. The place where pubescent girls discovered the world back then was not on Snapchat or adults-free social media but in Jackie comic, with its cartoon strips, pinups and advice clamped between ads for Anne French Deep Cleansing Milk and Dr White’s sanitary towels. Begun in 1964 by Dundee-based publishing giant DC Thomson it lasted some 30 years dispensing sage (if motherly) advice to hormonal girls about spots and whether they’d ever adequately fill a bra.

For women now of a certain age it was their bible and where they learned about boys (and where boys surreptitiously discovered what girls thought of them). The dog-eared pages of a teen magazine seem mighty thin material on which to hang a stage musical but at its peak Jackie had 600,000 weekly female readers who are now just the audience for something like this. Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner quoted Guardian columnist Zoe Williams who said Jackie magazine “was a curated, impermeable erotic discursive space” although that’s not quite how readers saw it.

We are in squawkbox sitcom territory. Jackie (Janet Dibley) is the 54-year-old, soon-to-be-divorced mother of a teenage son (Michael Hamway). Jackie’s own adolescent self from the 1970s (Daisy Steere) comes back like the Ghost of Times Past to offer support and advice (use lemons for soft elbows, no tongues on a first date) and discover how her youthful dreams of romance were fulfilled (or not). There is Jackie’s bezzie (Lori Haley Fox), husband (Graham Bickley), his new partner (Tricia Adele-Turner) and a man Jackie hooks up with (Nicholas Bailey). It’s all a bit Mamma Mia and it’s clearly aimed at the same Chardonnay-lubricated market (the megahit is back in the West End this October).

What summons her younger, gauche self to return is a box of old Jackies that the midlife-crisis mum discovers while clearing the house. The musical’s neon-garnished set and electrostatic costumes (Jim Shortfall) capture the heady cocktail that was Jackie magazine. The dancers in their stripy polyester tank tops and orange brushed cotton loons are a perfect evocation of the mag’s etiolated fashion drawings and cartoon strips. The celebrated Arlene Phillips recreates the disco dance styles from the era accompanied by a very well chosen selection of hits like the footstomping Tiger Feet, I Love to Love and an unforgettably funny rendition of the drippy, glitterball showstopper Puppy Love.

This mix of nostalgic teenybopperdom recast as Hard Rock Cafe should be as inane as any teenage problem page, and yet when the grown-ups – who have loved and lost, their teen dreams long in the past – sing, those equally inane love songs suddenly come to life again in an extraordinarily powerful way. When fiftysomething Jackie duets with her blind date Love Is In the Air it’s sad and touching and funny. Yes, love hurts – and how.

Jackie the Musical, is not deep, it’s not especially witty or knowing, and – despite it all – might have offered full-blown kitsch and more of the risible Cathy and Claire agony aunts. The images of the magazine covers and the speech bubbles will be lost to anyone not sitting in the front stalls but director Anna Linstrum offers a tale of modern life, some rollicking good fun and memories of a less commodified time, one of innocence and hope.