Eurobeat: Almost Eurovision
Pleasance Grand

Discotivity
Gilded Balloon

The Eurovision Song Contest is such an outlandish hunk of ridiculousness that it almost doesn’t need spoofing. It already is its own parody. That hasn’t stopped songwriter and producer Craig Christie and co-author Andrew Patterson from concocting a consistently amusing piece of musical mockery called Eurobeat. With a spot-on new British cast, this gigantic tickle of an Australian import will almost certainly shift south of Edinburgh before too long.

Eurobeat is a retaliatory lampoon that sprang into the world after Christie, a British passport-holder living Down Under, was denied entry to Eurovision. He’s got his own back, and then some, by composing ten songs that send up both musical and national clichés something rotten. The show’s premise is that we’re at the competition in “sunny, safe, secure Sarajevo”, where our gushing hosts Boyka (Mel Giedroyc), a pole-vaulter turned cabaret artiste, and her rictus-grinned sidekick Sergei (Glynn Nicholas, who also directs) keep the evening “rolling along like an inebriated Dutchman”.

Both actors are instantly, wonderfully funny. The audience participation angle is played for all its worth, what with each spectator assigned to one of the ten competing countries and, for a nominal fee, the preshow hawking of flags and clappers. It works, too. At the performance I attended the crowd seemed to be on a manic high even before the house opened.

The script is laden with broad but clever satire and withering innuendo. Between them, the show’s three choreographers have devised movement that is slick and camp. The songs, delivered by a versatile and tremendously spirited young cast, are hook-filled hoots. They include numbers from “new kids on the Eastern Bloc”; the KGB Boys; a Björk-ish ice maiden afflicted with a blood-freezing case of stroppiness; a Nana Mouskouri lookalike whose pop paean to Aphrodite unleashes her inner sexpot; and an Irish lad completely lost in an anthemic, and alcoholic, fog. The audience is invited to vote via mobile phone.

The process, I was assured, is not rigged. The winner at my show was a wholesome, white-collar gay Estonian and a brace of gym-going back-up boys whose ballad contained the lyric, “We can pull through if we pull hard”.

Discotivity, a boogie-friendly, panto-style riff on the Nativity story, is a much slighter slice of knowing cheese. To be fair this show, which transfers in an expanded form to the Arts Theatre in London from December 4, is still akin to a work-in-progress. It’s also been squeezed tight on to a tiny stage. The cast, featuring Michelle McManus, the Pop Idol winner, as the Virgin Mary, copes gamely with the limitations of both the space and a concept that might appeal most to a youthful, late-night audience at least half off its face. Bolstered by a soundtrack of disco classics, Toby Rose’s script is sprinkled with groan-worthy puns, pop culture references (from tired Paris Hilton jokes to a female shepherd whose first name is Cybill) and rude throwaway lines. The standout performance (and voice) is Sharon Cherry Ballard as Tiffany Turner, a donkey with a booty-jiggling attitude.

Eurobeat: 0131-556 6550 Discotivity: 0131-668 1633

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