I know it’s deeply un-Australian of me, but I’ve never quite understood the appeal of Tim Winton’s stories.

Of all his books, the picaresque epic Cloudstreet is the crowd favourite. For many people, a nimbus of feeling surrounds its mere mention: the intergenerational story of the Pickles and Lamb families functions as a cultural touchstone, a reflection of us, imbued with a potent mixture of nostalgia, sentiment and hope.

Malthouse Theatre’s ambitious remount of Nick Enright and Justin Monjo’s famous adaptation of Cloudstreet strikes this popular chord. There was a rapturous standing ovation on opening night that felt genuine (as opposed to merely loyal) and afterwards much excited chatter from audience members who were moved by the spectacle.

The original Belvoir St Theatre production, directed by Neil Armfield in 1998, was a stupendous hit, and toured Australia and Europe to universal acclaim. Twenty years after its premiere, it feels very much like a period piece.

Director Matthew Lutton and his team have thrown everything at this text but, just as Lutton’s instinct for spectacle exposed the weaknesses of Michael Gow’s Away a couple of years ago, so this production demonstrates that this is a show that depends on nostalgia. Like the book, Cloudstreet seemed to me to be an accumulation of events rather than of meaning: one episode follows another, without any vital sense of connection between them.

It’s undeniable that Lutton orchestrates an impressive show. Over the five hours, there are some beautiful moments. During the key scene of this play – when Fish and Quick, crouched in a dinghy, enter a spiritual space that is both water and sky – I realised halfway through, with a start, that the entire stage floor was covered ankle-deep with water, a black, depthless expanse throwing light ripples around the stage. It was magical and breathtaking.

Despite these moments, I found myself largely untouched. This is partly due to the show’s episodic nature, and partly the story itself – I always feel that I’m placed outside the us-ness of Winton’s narratives. That might be because even though I came here as a child, I still don’t really feel Australian. Perhaps it’s simply because I’m a woman: even when women and girls are present in Winton’s stories, they always seem to me to be primarily functions of male subjectivity.

There’s something too about the kinds of sentiment Winton’s stories generate. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against sentiment, but its presence often makes me wary. I wonder what this wash of feeling is drowning out, what it’s making invisible.

It’s impossible not to read the ramshackle home in Cloud Street, this “continent of a house”, as a synecdoche for Australia itself. Two families, the sensual, irresponsible Pickles and the God-fearing, prudent Lambs, flee different misfortunes – Sam Pickles has lost his fingers in a winch, while the Lambs’ favourite son Fish almost drowns, surviving with a brain injury – and end up sharing a huge house over two decades.

It’s a story that attempts to grapple, to some degree at least, with the heritage of colonisation. The house is haunted by the shadows of Indigenous Australia – it was formerly a mission for kidnapped Aboriginal girls, one of whom, like her captor, died in the library, a room that no one wants to enter. The danger is that Aboriginal voices exist merely as incidental emotional motivations for the white (male) characters.

The creators of this production are clearly conscious of this problem. The original script has been rewritten to emphasise the Indigenous stories through the introduction of more narrated text. The “Black Man” narrator has been replaced by two Storytellers (Ebony McGuire and Ian Michael) and they’ve introduced passages spoken in the Noongar language. The casting also includes three Indigenous actors.

This doesn’t solve the fundamental problem in the text: rather, it highlights it. Of course it’s legitimate to create an epic story about white Australia. But for all the flaws of its characters, Cloudstreet is ultimately a reassuring tale of Australian innocence – this is perhaps the reason for its enduring popularity. The role of the black presences (they’re not characters as such) is not to exist in their own right, but to guide and absolve the white characters.

The narrative arc of Fish (played by the autistic actor and Back to Back ensemble member Benjamin Oakes) is equally troubling. He reaches his spiritual apotheosis when he dies. Like the Aboriginal ghosts, he vanishes once the families make their peace and, through the ritual of birth, establish their rights over the house at Cloud Street. You can’t help reflecting on the erasures that make this country relaxed and comfortable.

Likewise, the women in the play are archetypes whose major narrative functions are to create and resolve emotional problems for the male characters. (It’s telling that Oriel is invisible to her son Fish.) Despite some promising storylines, the alcoholic, promiscuous Dolly (an outstanding portrayal from Natasha Herbert), the harshly conflicted Oriel Lamb (Alison Whyte) or Brenna Harding’s appealing Rose are all reduced in the end to claustrophobic icons of maternity.

This story is, like all Winton’s books, essentially about the men, with its central relationship between Fish and his brother Quick (Guy Simon). It’s maybe not surprising that the standout performances are the patriarchs: Bert LaBonté’s Sam (a detailed, warm and complex performance that confirms LaBonté as one of the finest actors on our stage) and Greg Stone’s confused, well-meaning Lester Lamb. When these actors are on stage together the text sings, and emotional connections that otherwise swing loose in the episodic narrative begin to make sense.

One thing I don’t feel ambivalent about is the worth of restaging Australian classics: it’s a crucial means of combating the amnesia that bedevils our culture. It would be churlish to argue that Cloudstreet isn’t worth revisiting: all due credit to the Malthouse to dragging this one out of the vault and giving it such handsome treatment. But what its popularity says about our values is maybe worth some serious interrogation.

• Cloudstreet, adapted by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo from the novel by Tim Winton, is showing at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne, until 16 June

• This article was amended on 14 May to correctly identify the year the Neil Armfield production Cloudstreet premiered