SAXTONS RIVER — A deformed humanoid creature with the features of a bat is discovered in a cave in West Virginia. The stuff of musical comedy? Hardly.
But that is the premise of Bat Boy: The Musical, which opens Friday, March, 4 for a two-week run at Main Street Arts.
Not for the faint of heart, this show is an edgy exploration of the themes of hypocrisy, acceptance, forgiveness, racism, revenge, and scapegoating, with a not-so-healthy dose of vampirism, botched experiments, potential incest, religious fervor, rape, murder, and mob rule thrown in.
The show, which MSA managing director Margo Ghia called in a news release, “the loudest, funniest, and easily the flat-out weirdest show Main Street Arts has ever produced,” is a mix of slapstick surrealism, and camp horror which mixes elements of hillbilly rock and post-modern Broadway into its boisterous score. Bat Boy's take on contemporary violence and prejudice is far from subtle.
It is probably not suitable for children or the easily offended. MSA Board member Michael Duffin characterized it as “Hamlet meets Rocky Horror in a coal mining town with weird animal science.”
A departure from the usual Main Street Arts winter production (think Gilbert and Sullivan, or Les Miserables), Bat Boy is the brainchild of director David Stern.
“It's not for everyone,” he said, “but it's a great opportunity for some of our talented local actors - and our audience - to experience something completely different.”
The show is based on a long running series of ”news” stories that were carried starting in 1992 by a now-defunct supermarket tabloid newspaper called the Weekly World News. It would run regular feature stories about Elvis Presley sightings, and the unlikely adventures of “Bat Boy,” a half-bat half human hybrid, that was trying to make his way in America's heartland.
Of course, the story was all nonsense, in keeping with the Weekly World News' reputation for happily trashing every tacky convention of the tabloid world even as it won a deeply devoted group of followers who wished every unlikely conspiracy story it contained was true.
Over time, tabloid TV news and the Internet took over the “weird news” franchise, and the publishers closed up shop, but then they asked themselves, what would be the consequence today if their odd bat boy fable was true? What if something that strange actually occurred in America's increasingly intolerant heartland? Bat Boy the Musical was their answer.
Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming took the story and developed the book, with Laurence O'Keefe providing the music and lyrics, and premiered the show at the Actors Gang Theatre on Halloween 1997. Since then, it has played Off-Broadway, in London and in regional theaters around the country.
The show's plot is simple and weird: an alien/vampire bat creature is discovered in Middle America. Alien tries to fit in. Alien is subjected to bigotry and religious panic. All hell breaks loose.
Within this simplistic plot and a brilliantly bizarre and intentionally tacky celebration of fanaticism, prejudice, and mindless hysteria is a surprisingly thoughtful plea for tolerance. In fact, Stern said that Bat Boy might contain the most sophisticated take on the origins of terrorism and mass violence to be found in American theater today.
In his Director's Note in the program book, Stern quotes the show's final plea: “Know your Bat Boy, Love your Bat Boy. Don't deny your beast inside,” as emblematic of “...the way people respond to difference, and how, when we find that difference within ourselves, we desperately wish to change - to kill the part that separates us from others.”
“We need to know our inner Bat Boy, and find the hairy, fanged little thing beautiful,” he adds.
Like MSA's production of Les Miserables last year, the show makes the most of MSA's intimate Heptebo Theater. The audience will find itself in the heart of a root-and-branch-filled cave, completely surrounded by the action.
Stern promises that if the action is a little intense sometimes, the results are more than worthwhile. “It's kind of nuts,” he says. “You'll like it.”
Heading the cast is Liam Johnson of Brattleboro as Bat Boy. A junior at Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS), he is a New England Youth Theatre (NYET) fixture, having played the title role in NEYT's Oliver! and appeared in other NEYT and BUHS productions.
Cast members include Libby McCawley of Putney as Meredith, who holds the secret of Bat Boy's origins, and Michael Duffin of Swanzey, N.H., as Meredith's husband, the crazed veterinarian Dr. Parker.
Other familiar names on the MSA stage are Falko Schilling, Jim Malley, Ira Wilner, Eric Robinson, Alexandra Mooney, Gail Hass, Mark and Marilyn Tullgren, Rick Cowan, Miles Cota, Victor Brandt, Kelly Dane and Allie McGahie.
Musical director is Ken Olsson, with band members Johnny Yuma, Jesse Peters, and Rob Athanasopoulos.
Stage manager is Ronnie Friedman of Westminster, assisted by Barbara Kurkul of Saxtons River and Vanessa Stern of Westminster. Scenic design is by David Stern, and costume designer is Sandy Klein.