Theatre review: Eugenius!

Since its 2016 concert debut Ben Adams & Chris Wilkins' (book, music & lyrics) musical Eugenius! has been popping up in various concerts and full stagings; I have a feeling I was planning to catch its West End transfer, but that became a lockdown casualty. But the show's become known for developing an instant cult following, so instead we now get Hannah Chissick's revival at the Turbine Theatre, which may in fairness be a better home for a comic book musical much of whose appeal comes from a likeably thrown-together feel. Set at some point in the 1980s in a generically John Hughes Ohio high school, Eugene (Elliott Evans) is a bullied geek who dreams of an intergalactic superhero called Tough Man (Dominic Andersen) and his evil nemesis Lord Hector (understudy Louis Doran) by night, and turns the stories into comic books by day.

Theatre review: Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens

It seems to be revived frequently enough but I hadn’t got round to seeing Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens until the Union’s current production by Bryan Hodgson. Bill Russell (book and lyrics) and Janet Hood’s (music) musical is described as a “song cycle,” although I’d put it much more firmly in “play with songs” territory – the musical numbers only occasionally interrupt what is for the main part a series of monologues by the dead. The show dates from 1989 but has apparently been regularly revised since because its subject matter hasn’t become as irrelevant as many think. That subject is of course HIV/AIDS, and the play takes its inspiration from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt that was made in response to the fact that, at the time, the official response to victims remained to sweep them under the carpet. The quilt was (and is, as it continues to be added to,) an attempt by loved ones not just to record the names of those lost, but to reflect something of each unique personality as well.