Find Your Inner “Bat Boy” at The Western Stage

 

The Western Stage continues its 30thAnniversary Sept. 3rd with the surprise off-Broadway hit Bat Boy the Musical. Ripped from the headlines of The Weekly World News, this tragic-comic tale of America’s favorite pointy eared outcast will have audiences squealing with laughter. Bat Boy the Musical plays through Sept. 24th on the Mainstage, Hartnell College Performing Arts Center. Season tickets are still the best bargain, saving over 50% off the single ticket price. To purchase tickets, call TWS’ box office at 755-6816 or visit our website at westernstage.com and discover your very own inner Bat Boy. (96 Word PSA)

 

In the early 1990’s, The Weekly World News, a tabloid so outlandish it makes the National Enquirer look like The Wall Street Journal, ran a cover story about the discovery of a half-boy, half-bat mutant in the dark, dank bowels of a West Virginia cave. The black and white picture of the bald, pointy-eared, fang-bearing bat-child screeching on the front page captured the twisted imaginations of the tabloid’s readership and thus became the first installment in a series of articles chronicling the Bat Boy’s outlandish adventures. Since then the Bat Boy has been spotted escaping from the FBI, assisting in the capture of Saddam Hussein, visiting some local campers at the Pinnacles State National Park, enrolling in Fall classes at Hartnell College, and most recently looking for love on the Central Coast of California. (See Salinas Bat Boy Alert for more details.)

 

Two readers in particular were particularly fascinated by the Bat Boy’s unfolding saga. Keythe Farley (a TWS alum) and Brian Flemming thought it would be great fun to do a play about the emerging cult hero, so they set about writing a book for the play and series of songs about the human/vampire bat hybrid. Many of these early tunes, which they acknowledge were quite weak, were only performed at parties for friends. It was not until they met composer Laurence O’Keefe in 1996 that the musical portion of the show finally began to take shape. Farley and Flemming were running concessions at the Actors’ Gang, an artist’s collective in L.A., when they decided to put up a picture of the Bat Boy to amuse customers. O’Keefe, who was there conducting his score for the musical Euphoria, spotted a picture of the Bat Boy at the concessions stand and became instantly fascinated. The three began talking about the show, and soon O’Keefe was writing a score for Farley and Flemming’s book that parodied every major musical composer from Stephen Sondheim to Andrew Lloyd Webber. The result of this happenstance collaboration was Bat Boy the Musical, a surprise hit that has gone onto highly successful runs in both New York and London since making its modest debut at the Actors’ Gang’s humble 100 seat theatre.  

 

Bat Boy the Musical tells the tragic tale of a half-boy, half bat mutant child who is discovered by a gang of pot smoking teenage spelunkers in a deep subterranean cave just outside Hope Falls, West Virginia. Torn from the comfort of his dank little home after biting one of the teenagers, he is delivered directly to the local veterinarian, who wants to immediately put the abomination down. However, the Bat Boy’s life is spared thanks to the compassionate pleading of the veterinarian’s wife, Meredith. What ensues is a diabolically funny musical that sends up every B-Movie horror flick imaginable. The plight of the Bat Boy, who himself looks like a pimply-faced Nosferartu, is comparable to the trials endured by the Beast in Beauty and the Beast or the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, in which a deformed outcast pursues a forbidden romance with a beautiful woman. The angry gun toting mob that eventually goes hunting for Bat Boy through the woods of Hope Falls is likewise reminiscent of the angry torch bearing mob that storms Castle Frankenstein. Both mobs are motivated by an irrational belief that the deformed physical appearance of the “monster” is a manifestation of his inner spiritual bankruptcy. Dr. Parker, Hope Fall’s psychotic veterinarian, is also a kindred spirit to such great mad scientists as Dr. Jekyll of Jekyll and Hyde fame or perhaps even Vincent Price in The Fly, men whose reckless scientific practice reveals their own inner monster. 

 

Yet, the parodies do not end with send-ups of the horror movie genre. Like his collaborators, O’Keefe spares no musical composer in his score. From the opening number “Hold Me Bat Boy”, which sends-up Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, to “I’ll Show You a Thing or Two”, in which Bat Boy undergoes a Pygmalion or My Fair Lady like transformation from howling brute to sophisticated erudite, the eclectic score is both a parody and an homage to the great American musical composers upon whose shoulders Bat Boy the Musical stands.

 

Yet, the writers and composer insist that Bat Boy the Musical is not mere camp as some critics have suggested. “Its more farce than camp,” Farley has said. “Camp tends to wink at the audience. We let the audience draw its own conclusion.” The writers recommend that the actors take their parts as seriously as they would if performing in Hamlet or Long Day’s Journey into Night. Despite all the comedy in the play, it is fundamentally a tragedy in the truest Aristotelian sense of the word.   

 

Bat Boy the Musical is directed by TWS artistic director Jon Patrick Selover whose talents have recently brought such musical extravaganzas as Cabaret (2003) and Sweeney Todd (2004) to realization on TWS’ main stage. 

 

The Western Stage continues its 2005 season in the fall with Lisa Loomer’s dark comedy The Waiting Room in September, Victor Villianseñor’s family epic Rain of Gold in October, Anton Chekhov’s classic comedy The Cherry Orchard in November, and Kenneth Graham’s childhood favorite Wind in the Willows in December. 

 

Dan Tarker     Literary Associate

 

Directed by Jon Patrick Selover

Choreography by Susan Cable

Musical Direction by Don Dally

Scenic Design by Ted Michael Dolas

Light Design by Derek Duarte

Costume Design by Jenn Marrazzo           

Stage Management by Allison Stamm

 

CAST

 

Bat Boy………………………………Lucas Alifano

Meredith Parker…………………….Anna Ishida

Dr. Parker……………………………Richard Boynton

Shelley Parker……………………….Brittany Bexton

Sheriff…………………………………Mitch Davis

Ruthie Taylor…………………………Jill Azevedo

Rick Taylor/Pan………………………Mike Baker

Ron……………………………………RJ Livingston

Mrs. Taylor……………………………Diane Elhers

Lorraine/Town Council………………Anna Schumacher

Maggie/Mayor……………………….Dawn Flood

Roy/Town Council…………………..Justin Azevedo

Daisy/Town Council…………………Joelle Kaiser

Bud/Town Council…………………..Errol Osteraa

Ned/Town Council…………………..Carl Salbacka

Rev. Hightower……………………….Pete Russell

Male Ensemble………………………RJ Livingston

                                                               Justin Azevedo

                                                               Carl Salbacka

                                                               Taylor Ogletree

                                                               Marc Layus

                                                               Dale Thompson

                                                               Errol Osteraa

Female Ensemble……………………Anna Schumacher

                                                               Joelle Kaiser

                                                               Jill Azevedo

                                                               Elizabeth Finkler

                                                               Diane Elhers

                                                               Dawn Flood

                                                               Elizabeth Fazzio    

                                                               Carissa Shubin