Edward Scissorhands: Dance musical. Directed and adapted by Matthew Bourne, with Caroline Thompson, from the screenplay by Tim Burton and Thompson. Music by Terry Davies and Danny Elfman. (Through Dec. 10. Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. One hour, 55 minutes. Tickets: $35-$90. Call (415) 512-7770 or go to www.shnsf.com).

The feet fly faster than the topiary-snipping scissors-fingers of the artificial boy in Matthew Bourne's musical version of "Edward Scissorhands." Not a word is spoken, but the story of the strangely endearing misfit, who tries and fails to find a home in suburban America, is as clear, offbeat and enchanting onstage as in the beloved Tim Burton film on which it's based.

It's Bourne's week for coast-to-coast American openings of shows based on popular movies. His "Scissorhands" opened Tuesday at the Orpheum Theatre in a Best of Broadway American premiere, beginning a nationwide tour that will move steadily east, where "Mary Poppins" (which he co-directed for Disney with Richard Eyre) opens tonight on Broadway. Invigoratingly choreographed and performed, and vividly designed (set and costumes) by Lez Brotherston, "Scissorhands" is Bourne's second stunning Orpheum outing this year, after his revelatory male-swan "Swan Lake" last spring.

It isn't, and doesn't try to be, completely faithful to the movie, which is both part of its charm and the source of some of its less successful aspects. It's remarkably true to the spirit of Burton's film, however. Produced by Bourne's New Adventures company, the story -- pushed back to the 1950s from the film's mythic '80s -- was adapted by director-choreographer Bourne with Caroline Thompson, who wrote the screenplay for Burton. Terry Davies' buoyant, captivating music includes liberal helpings from Danny Elfman's movie score, with vigorous infusions of rhythm and blues, early rock, jazz and broad swaths of balletic passages that sound like neo-Tchaikovsky.

Brotherston's imaginative sets and costumes capture the Edward Gorey-gothic charm of the film with delightful originality. When Edward's inventor dies, leaving him not quite finished (that's why his hands are scissor blades), the town he wanders into is a Julie Taymor-like vision of small look-alike, pastel homes piled atop one another in glorious profusion. In one of Bourne's most captivating passages, "The Suburban Ballet," the brightly individualized denizens of Hope Springs pass through an entire day of routine comings and goings, chores, exercises, networking, teen flirtations and one wife's infidelities, as Howard Harrison's painterly lights trace the arc from dawn to dusk.

There's no Johnny Depp, Dianne Wiest, Winona Ryder or Vincent Price in this version, of course. Small matter. Bourne's dynamic opening-night ensemble members (all the parts are double or triple cast) fill their roles with sharp definition and infectious verve.

Sam Archer (alternating with Richard Winsor) is a poignantly sweet Edward, fearful of, but boyishly succumbing to, the maternal ministrations of Peg Boggs (a radiantly good-hearted Etta Murfitt in the Wiest role) when she takes him into her family. He's comically innocent and inept, trying to adapt to normal life with his slasher-movie hands. And he's a superb dancer, cutting loose in frenetic, energetic solos in the midst of Bourne's wondrously angular, stylized, idiosyncratic jitterbug numbers and executing yearningly lovely, balletic duets with a delightfully graceful, solid, brightly evolving Kerry Biggin as the apparently unattainable Kim (Ryder in the film).

Michela Meazza is a dynamically voracious vamp as the sexually insatiable Joyce (Kathy Baker in the movie), hilariously playing against Edward's innocence, her various lovers and the milquetoast-ish jealousy of Steve Kirkham as her husband. A feral, nastily athletic James Leece is Kim's pushy, arrogant boyfriend, Edward's implacable nemesis and the leader of an athletically out-of-control pack of teens.

It's only a minor distraction that Bourne's teen gang looks as if it belongs more in an urban "West Side Story" than the placid '50s suburb of his story. It's hormone-driven attack on Edward, however, carries much less impact than the movie's hypocrisy-based misunderstandings that transform the good suburbanites into a raging, xenophobic mob. On the other hand, he's turned the film's solitary religious zealot (former local actor and director O-Lan Jones) into a bitingly funny satire of priggish intolerance in the forms of the Rev. Judas and Esmeralda Evercreech (the devilishly goth-creepy Matthew Malthouse and Rachel Morrow).

Where Bourne triumphs, with considerable help from Davies, Thompson and Brotherston, is in replicating Burton's delicately bittersweet whimsy in a manner uniquely his own. His "Scissorhands" is something new, a book musical without a verbal book as a poignantly upbeat fable in dance, gesture and design. Fantasy springs delightfully to life in this Hope Springs, with a trio of loving cheerleaders popping out of posters, an entire garden of fanciful topiary figures coming to life and snow gently falling all over.

It's a generous show as well. As Davies' energetic score swells from a fine orchestra (under the composer's leadership), Bourne fills the large Orpheum stage with vigorous dancers, each depicting another deftly sketched individual. His "Scissorhands" is a cut above the musical norm.