Theatre review: Pippin

I first saw Avenue Q long before I ever saw Pippin, so maybe that's why it's taken me until now to wonder if the former's recurring theme of Princeton searching for his Purpose is a deliberate pisstake of the latter, and the title character's wandering through the world in the conviction that there's a great meaning to his existence that'll reveal itself if he can just tick off all the mundane things other people do. In Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson's tuneful but demented musical "the mundane things" include ruling half of Europe, because it's (very) loosely based on the son of Charlemagne, who actually was called Pippin (well, Pepin, which is a bit more plausible as a Mediaeval French name.) At the start of the show he's just come back from years of study, but as heir to the throne Pippin (Ryan Anderson) thinks he should learn the ropes to succeed his father (Daniel Krikler.)

Theatre review: Altar Boyz

After a successful off-Broadway run, Kevin Del Aguila, Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker's boyband spoof Altar Boyz finally debuts in the UK, in a production running for just two weeks in Greenwich. Maybe this low-key run is just testing the waters as there's nothing half-baked about Steven Dexter's production, and the show's remarkably silly sense of humour seems to me a good fit for this side of the pond. Altar Boyz takes the form of a concert, the final night of a tour by the titular Catholic boyband. Matthew (Liam Doyle) is the leader, Mark (Jonny Fines) the closeted pretty-boy, Luke (Jamie-Ray Hartshorne) the "streetwise" one, Juan (Faisal Khodabukus) the latin lover-boy with a tragic backstory, and Abraham (Alex Jordan-Mills) is Jewish, but is in the band because he happened to be in the room when God (the recorded voice of Luke Kempner, doing an impression of The X Factor's Peter Dickson,) gave them their calling.

Theatre review: Loserville

It's all looking very retro at the Garrick at the moment, as it may be playing host to a new musical, but Elliot Davis and James Bourne's Loserville is set in 1971, while there's something of the Starlight Express to Francis O'Connor's neon microchip of a set. Though a British musical, this is very much the classic American high school story, as Michael Dork (they... they know what that word actually means, right?) and his Star Trek-loving friends spend their time in the school's computer room, steering clear of the popular kids. When a similarly geeky girl, Holly, arrives at the school, Michael not only gets a romantic interest on his wavelength, but also an ally who can help with his attempt to make computers send messages to each other: He essentially wants to invent email, and get there before the big computer corporation up the road does.