Unbeknownst to him, these aren't dreams but visions of true events in a galaxy far, far away, and when ruthless Hollywood executive Lex Hogan (Lara Denning) options the Tough Man comics for a movie, Lord Hector mistakes the set for the real thing, and invades the Earth to stage a showdown with his enemy (who is also his lost twin brother.)
It's not exactly the most coherently structured story and the book is by far the weakest element of the show, often losing focus and sight of some of the characters. But that's clearly not where the writers' hearts are - instead the affectionate 1980s spoof is the main hook to hang some very entertaining and catchy songs on. So we open with the typical high school movie setting, where Eugene is the laughing stock of his class but barely notices it because he has best friends in Feris (understudy Joseph Beach) and Janey (Jaina Brock-Patel,) who is of course desperately in love with him to his total oblivion.
We then move on to a spoof of movie tropes of the decade, with Andersen as a Schwarzenegger expy cast as Tough Man in the film, and Maddison Firth as Carrie, the actress playing his sidekick Super Hot Lady. There's also the requisite story of the evil Hollywood machine exploiting a young writer's ideas, and him having to find his own inner superhero to stand up to them.
These more general references work better than the specific ones, and sadly Feris, the character most dedicated to referencing specific pop culture, ended up making me cringe. In fairness he is openly acknowledged as the stock character who speaks entirely in movie quotes, and Beach knocks the performance out of the park, but it's the choice of pop culture gags that irritated me: Apart from a couple of instances (Weird Science is definitely a more niche John Hughes reference than The Breakfast Club) Adams and Wilkins have gone for the most well-known and overdone titles; it felt a bit too familiar, less like a deep dive into 1980s fads, and more like one into Family Guy cutaways about 1980s fads.
Fortunately the worst of this is kept to the first act; Feris gets a bit more of his own storyline as he catastrophically tries to flirt with Carrie, in parallel to Eugene gradually realising that Janey is more than just a friend. Doran has a lot of fun camping it up as the ineptly genocidal Hector, and Rhys Taylor camps it up in a different way as Lex's downtrodden but flamboyant PA. The cast is generally very strong and invest the show with exactly the kind of wild enthusiasm it needs to plough through while not taking itself remotely seriously. (Plus Vanessa nearly went into a bit of a swoon when she realised Tough Man wasn't wearing a comedy muscle suit and those are Andersen's actual arms.)
And it's ultimately the songs that carry the evening - when he's not been busy giving a wolf a banana Adams has been perfecting the insanely catchy pop hook, and finale "Go Eugenius!" is one of the biggest earworms I've heard in musical theatre for a long time. (Also, everyone running away with "last two on stage have to sing the power ballad!" is a great gag.) Aaron Renfree's choreography finds great ways to bring energy to the compact space of Andrew Exeter's set, which is dominated by screens showing Exeter and Andy Walton's cartoonish video designs. There may be moments along the way where I found the writing too reliant on well-worn gags, but the show's energy and enthusiasm are too much to let that dominate the evening - I left with a big smile on my face, and the closing number hasn't been out of my head since.
Eugenius! by Ben Adams and Chris Wilkins is booking until the 28th of May at the Turbine Theatre.
Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Pamela Raith.
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