Stage-to-screen review: Eurobeat - The Pride of Europe

I didn't see the original West End production of Eurovision spoof Eurobeat; if I recall correctly, I had tickets to see it a couple of months into its run at the Novello, but it closed before then. Maybe a streamed version, available in the weeks leading up to the real song contest returning, will prove a better home for it: Craig Christie's (book, music and lyrics) Eurobeat - The Pride of Europe is a new version of the musical, with completely different songs to its 2008 premiere, some of them reflecting recent Eurovision trends more obviously than others. In a way this is only half a review: The original show had an audience text vote resulting in a different winner every night; stream.theatre's version has an online vote carrying on throughout its run, and will invite viewers of this first part to watch a special results show once the results have been tabulated and independently verified by the accountants of Liechtenstein.

Theatre review: Zanna, Don't!

Can you get much camper than a pun on the infamous Olivia Newton-John flop Xanadu? If Tim Acito and Alexander Dinelaris' musical Zanna, Don't! is anything to go by, probably not. It's a gentle satire not just on homophobia, but on the American High School pecking order in general. At Heartsville High boys date boys, girls date girls, heteros stay firmly in the closet and the Bible insists on a bit of sleeping around. Steve (Liam Christopher Lloyd,) the lowly captain of the football team, is punching above his weight when he dates the school sex symbol, chess champion Mike (Jonathan Dudley,) and last year the girls scored a big hit performing Swan Lake on mechanical bulls. The school even boasts its own magical matchmaker Zanna (David Ribi,) whose big purple wand finds people who'd be perfect together, but can't seem to find someone for Zanna himself.