WISH-LIST WEDNESDAY: Bat Boy

Original artwork for Bat Boy off-broadway

This week, in preparation for the upcoming New York City Centre Encores! production, let's check out a 90s horror rock musical that is having something of a renaissance. Based on a tabloid story about a half-human, half-bat boy discovered in a cave in West Virginia, "Bat Boy" saw Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming took this concept and, in collaboration with Laurence O'Keefe, write a musical adaptation that would, appropriately, premiere on Halloween when it was first staged in 1997. For O'Keefe in particular this would prove to be a career springboard, especially given the critical response to its 2001 off-broadway run that yielded a Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding musical.

The story centres around three teens, Ron, Rick and Ruthie Taylor, who have a penchant for spelunking in the fictional town of Hope Falls, and they come across the titular human-bat hybrid in a cave, ultimately befriending and trying to assimilate him into their society. In spite of its largely comical undertones, it still manages to explore real and relatable themes such as prejudice, belonging and humanity. This is all set to a rock style score by O'Keefe, giving it a distinctly cult horror quality, not unlike "Little Shop of Horrors" or similar musicals.

The London Palladium cast of Bat Boy

Although Bat Boy's original London run in 2004 arguably failed to reach the same calibre of success as its initial runs, it managed to endear itself to UK audience far more successfully at the Edinburgh Fringe two years later, with critics citing its more scaled-down staging a far better fit for the show. With a 2023 staged concert at the London Palladium having proved massively successful, and another one coming up at NYCC, one has to wonder if we will be seeing another fully staged production before too long...