One night at the beer tent during the 2024 Fringe Festival, solo performer Matti McLean asked my opinion of two potential projects, and I preferred his pitch for A Canadian Explains Eurovision to Americans . I’m so pleased he listened to my inebriated and uninformed opinion, because it produced an entertainingly accessible introduction to the recently concluded annual musical contest that seems to enthrall everyone in the world outside of the U.S.A. Bigger than American Idol , the Eurovision Song Contest is like the Super Bowl meets Broadway and has generated generations of toe-tapping three-minute dance hits, catapulting to fame groups from ABBA to Riverdance.

Dressed in a rainbow-spangled shirt and shorts, McLean starts with a disco-tastic taste of the pop anthems that dominate the world’s largest international songwriting competition. McLean also outlines all the official rules (no singers under 16, and no political messages) and a trivia-heavy history of the phenomenon’s early explosive growth, when it spawned enduring standards like “Volare.”

A self-proclaimed “double threat” who claims incorrectly that he can dance and act but not sing, McLean entertainingly karaokes his way through that classic and other Eurovision hits with vibrant enthusiasm, if not an operatic vibrato. More importantly, he shares what the contest represents for the LGBTQ+ community. For a queer, geeky pastor’s son from conservative Canada, the “gayest contest on earth” became a beacon of acceptance for McLean. And by pioneering audience voting, Eurovision fostered a diverse aesthetic that found not merely tolerance, but mainstream popularity.

Thanks to McLean, I now have a basic working knowledge of Eurovision’s scoring system, and some appreciation for why it inspires such obsession in “Eurovangelists” like him. The script’s lighthearted tone takes a darker turn towards the end, losing a little steam as it dips briefly into domestic violence and political division, but McLean doesn’t allow his intimate reflections to overwhelm his story’s joyful center. This show might not change your life, but it did leave me with some terrific tunes in my head and a smile on my face.