The kerfuffle over the collapse of a community opera, Beached, to a libretto by Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall with music by Harvey Brough, seems to have gone international. In short, the main school in the Bridlington area fielding 300 participants withdrew when Hall refused to change the lines (sung by an adult in the piece): "Of course I'm queer/ That's why I left here/ So if you infer/ That I prefer/ A lad to a lass/ And I'm working class/ I'd have to concur".

Acid prophecies of this show’s swift demise, as with that of the great Italian tenor whose supposed transformation from il stupendo to il stifferino results in the debut of a surpise new Otello at the "Cleveland Grand Opera", turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Allora, the tunes and the lyrics aren’t prime cut, but it’s slickly done, strongly cast and contains enough frothy set pieces to earn its salt. And any musical which has stylish fun with both the most electrifying opening of any opera (Verdi's, of course) and the noblest curtain deserves to run and run, in my book at least.

Broadway musicals can have a bumpy transatlantic crossing. For every New York entry that repeats its acclaim on the West End, others quickly fade, while still others never make it to the capital at all: consider The Light in the Piazza, which won six Tonys in 2005 but hasn't yet been seen in the UK south of Leicester. What, then, of Shrek, DreamWorks's entry into the Broadway musical sweepstakes that called it quits in New York after little more than a year? It's way too early to tell whether London will prove the show's salvation, but at least it boasts two Nigels who between them are not to be missed.

It’s a quirk of the acting profession that someone can fly under the radar for years and then suddenly be catapulted into the limelight. Nigel Lindsay's impeccable record in contemporary plays at the Donmar, Almeida and Royal Court has left all but keen theatre-goers with only a dim sense of his distinctive profile. He is currently performing his most high-profile role yet - unless you count the doltish white Muslim jihadist Barry in Four Lions. But one thing will not change. To play the grouchy Scottish ogre in Shrek the Musical (in which he's been coached by his old mate David Tennant), Lindsay will spend 90 minutes before every performance having prosthetic make-up applied. When he walks out of the stage door, the junior hordes won’t know him from the doorman.

It’s a quirk of the acting profession that someone can fly under the radar for years and then suddenly be catapulted into the limelight. Nigel Lindsay's impeccable record in contemporary plays at the Donmar, Almeida and Royal Court has left all but keen theatre-goers with only a dim sense of his distinctive profile. He is currently performing his most high-profile role yet - unless you count the doltish white Muslim jihadist Barry in Four Lions. But one thing will not change. To play the grouchy Scottish ogre in Shrek the Musical (in which he's been coached by his old mate David Tennant), Lindsay will spend 90 minutes before every performance having prosthetic make-up applied. When he walks out of the stage door, the junior hordes won’t know him from the doorman.

The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has always been one of London’s theatrical success stories, attracting luminaries from Flora Robson to Judi Dench, but over the past few years under the stewardship of artistic director Timothy Sheader, it has really come into its own. In 2010, its Olivier Award-winning production of Into the Woods became the highest-grossing production in the venue's history, whilst The Crucible by Arthur Miller attracted a whole new audience to the theatre – 72 per cent of those who attended the play had never visited the theatre before – and The Comedy of Errors became its most successful Shakespeare play to date.

In case anybody had the bizarre notion that the Classical Brits was getting a trifle too classical, the 2011 version of the event was rebranded as the Classic Brit Awards. That would seem to open the door to almost anything - classic rock perhaps, or classic schmaltz (well, waltzmeister Andre Rieu did win Album of the Year). The night climaxed with Dame Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger", capping a tribute to the late John Barry, and sounding nowhere near as "classic" as she used to.

“There’s no place like home… there’s no place like home… there’s no place like home…” A wish became a mantra and then became a happy ending, when Dorothy wiggled her ruby-red shoes in the MGM movie version of L Frank Baum’s fairy story. But this documentary didn’t even get to the most watched film in the history of cinema until its closing 10 minutes: perhaps because its makers were concerned that if they’d called it “The Story of L Frank Baum” it wouldn’t have found an audience.

The murders of five prostitutes in Ipswich: it’s hard to imagine a less likely subject for a musical, not least because the memory of the crimes of forklift-truck driver Steve Wright, committed in late 2006, is still so horribly fresh. But there is nothing lurid about this exceptional piece of theatre, created by Alecky Blythe and composer Adam Cork, and directed with restraint, tenderness and potent simplicity by Rufus Norris. It’s moving, fascinating and even funny. And if it is also occasionally shocking, it’s only because of its startling directness and honesty.

Foot fetishists will have a field day at Betty Blue Eyes, given that the producer Cameron Mackintosh's latest venture is also the first in my experience to sing of bunions, calluses and corns, the last encompassing a passing reference to a lyric from Oklahoma!: another show on Sir Cameron's CV. But the happy news is that musical enthusiasts will themselves find reason to cheer a defiantly homegrown entry that turns a comparatively little-known film (A Private Function) into a generous-hearted, eminently tuneful tribute to British decency and pluck.

Does the perfect murder make for the perfect musical? One doesn't have to make undue claims for the work's chamber-size appeal to warm to Thrill Me, the American two-hander that has arrived at the Tristan Bates Theatre as this season's entry in retelling the story of the Chicago killers, Leopold and Loeb. (Last season's was the superb Almeida Theatre revival of Rope, from director Roger Michell.) While getting up close and personal with a show can sometimes magnify its flaws, the intimacy on this occasion allows a real appreciation of the performers, especially newcomer George Maguire, of whom it might fairly be said that a star is born.