Back in 2013, I performed in a local production of Eurobeat: Almost Eurovision, an Australian comedy musical about the Eurovision Song Contest.

I was part of a Russian boy-band, named The KGBoyz.

Here’s the story.

Or rather, my recollection of the story.

Like most local theatre groups, we were pretty starved of male performers, so although it was scripted for 4 young males, they got 1. And 3 old males. As a result, we changed the scripted storyline. Instead of the KG Boys being a modern boyband, we were now a boyband from the 1990’s, re-formed to take part in Eurovision. Indeed, one of our members had died and his son was performing in his place (hence the single young member of the group).

We wore the traditional suits with white t-shirts underneath (all of which were, intentionally, a couple of sizes too small, to show us trying to squeeze into our old outfits) and, on stage, did everything you’d expect a boy-band to do, with close harmonies, cliched dancing and everything else.

The song we sung, Ice Queen, has a musical section in it, during which we danced, including breakdancing, all badly, involving us helping each other and even limping off stage with bad backs.

Eurobeat was a massive success for The Cast, with audience members saying we could have toured with it.

Here’s the song we sung, this taken from the original, professional show…

So, my part of the story.

I had some great lines in that song, including that last line of the chorus (“she is beautiful and cold…”), which I really loved to milk. I also took the opportunity to leave the stage, coming out the audience, picking on a random female and singing to them (often stroking they hair over-enthusiastically) . For the final night, I held that end note at the very end of the song, sinking to my knees on the floor, giving it all I had. It was cheesy and fantastic.

I rehearsed to a combination of songs from Backstreet Boys and 5ive, to really get into that boy-band vibe.

Until I performed in The Wedding Singer, this was my favourite show that I’d been involved with.