“Bat Boy” Bites Back, and the Laughs Draw Blood
By Anthony Chase
Horror is a genre that invites laughter. When “Mother” lunges through the shower curtain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the audience gasps, and then, having settled back from fiction to the safety of their seats, we laugh at the force of our own terror. That reflex makes horror natural soil for comedy. Among the most quoted moments in Stanley Kubrick’s film of Stephen King’s The Shining is Jack Nicholson thrusting his face through a splintered door, ax in hand, to deliver a Tonight Show “Here’s Johnny!” In Jaws, laughter rippled through movie houses after every shark attack.
Bat Boy: The Musical indulges that impulse to the extreme. It teases us with our own fears and anxieties, takes aim at American intolerance, and salts its dialogue with gleefully inappropriate vocabulary and observations. 2nd Generation Theatre’s production at Shea’s Smith Theatre understands the assignment completely.
The show, with music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and book and lyrics by Greg Kotis, opened Off Broadway in 2001. Its inspiration was a Weekly World News headline trumpeting the “discovery” of a creature that was half boy, half bat. Many have observed that the title character, at his first appearance, resembles Nosferatu in a loincloth. O’Keefe would go on to write Legally Blonde: The Musical with his wife and collaborator, Nell Benjamin, and Heathers: The Musical with Kevin Murphy. Kotis is the co-creator of Urinetown.
The setting is Hope Falls, West Virginia, where three teenage spelunkers, Ron, Rick and Ruthie Taylor, stumble upon a feral, bat-like boy in a cave. He bites Ruthie, the brothers haul him off (“Hold Me, Bat Boy”), and Sheriff Reynolds deposits him at the home of the local veterinarian, Dr. Parker. The doctor’s wife, Meredith, agrees to take him in (“Christian Charity”). Under her care, the creature learns to speak, takes the name Edgar, and longs to join the community. The community, redneck in every way, is not on board. Neither, we quickly learn, is his stepfather, Dr. Parker.
For all its silliness, Bat Boy has a point to make about the way a frightened town picks a scapegoat, and the good Christian folk of Hope Falls are its chief offenders. The authors make the point and then trip over it on purpose.
Doug Weyand, who directed 2nd Generation’s 2019 production of “The Toxic Avenger,” is clearly at home in this territory. His direction and choreography are beautifully staged and perfectly calibrated. Weyand grasps the essential paradox of the material: the darker the moment, the bigger the laugh. The most grotesque turns of the plot land as the most hilarious.
Ricky Needham is a marvel as Bat Boy, also known as Edgar. His performance is a demonstration of impressive agility and control. Even at the height of Bat Boy’s frenetic energy, Needham’s total commitment to the physicality of the role makes his transformation from snarling cave dweller to eager young gentleman, great fun.
Michele Marie Roberts, perfection as always, plays Meredith Parker, the perfectly coiffed and conservatively dressed 1950s housewife who withholds affection from her husband and is determined that her daughter embrace the same buttoned-up values. When the girl confesses that she misses her boyfriend, Meredith snaps, “Don’t talk like a slut.” Roberts’ comic timing and understated delivery are deliciously funny, and when she sings, her voice soars with the resonance of a trumpet.
Audree Woods is Shelley Parker, the all-American girl whose irrepressible libido turns out to be a vital engine of the plot. Marc Sacco’s Dr. Parker begins with the gentle wholesomeness of Mr. Rogers and descends, by degrees, into a Mr. Hyde of escalating comic menace.
The diminutive Arin Lee Dandes makes her first entrance as the Sheriff in full Smokey Bear hat regalia, a sight gag that sets the tone for a performance hilarious in its silly earnestness. Danielle Walker’s Ruthie, bitten in the opening scene, commits wholly to deranged suffering for the rest of the evening. Dan Urtz is Rick, the world’s worst boyfriend, and also turns up as Lorraine and Mr. Dillon.
Much of the fun comes from the ensemble’s quick changes. Karen Harty DiVita plays Ron and Mayor Maggie in back-to-back appearances that require fabulously ridiculous, instantaneous switches of character. Dave Spychalski is an over-the-top Mrs. Taylor, as well as Roy and the tardy Institute Man, whose big comic moment is simply his arrival. Collin McKee-Jackson plays Daisy and Young Meredith, squeezing the juice out of little bits, such as ineptly taking the minutes at a town meeting.
Joe Greenan, as Reverend Billy Hightower, launches the second act with a rousing revival number delivered to a comically indifferent congregation. Thomas Evans makes a startling entrance as Pan and also plays a doctor. Kai Crumley as Bud and Sabrina Kahwaty Garcia as Clem and Meredith’s mother earnestly and energetically round out a company in which no one coasts.
Ian Liedke’s music direction keeps the score’s eclectic styles crisp and well sung. Chris Cavanagh, who designed the set, lights and sound, gives the production a flexible, atmospheric world. We shift easily between locations. Devin Prokop’s costumes are whimsically comic and period appropriate.
Bat Boy is not for the easily offended, and that is precisely the point. Under Weyand’s sure hand, 2nd Generation Theatre delivers a production that is ghoulish, irreverent and, in its sneaky way, humane. And as 2nd Generation is quick to remind us, it is a perfect way to welcome the Halloween season.
The production continues through October 18 at Shea's Smith Theatre.
