Wednesday, November 19, 1997
Campy musical combines quirky humor, clever tunes
THEATER:
Actors’ Gang production of ‘Bat Boy’ puts twist on U.S. genreBy
Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The only thing campier than a tabloid headline that reads "Bat
boy found in West Virginia cave" is perhaps a musical version of
that very story. And the only thing more delightfully mindless yet
oddly thought-provoking than sneaking a peak at the Weekly World
News in the check-out line is watching the Actors’ Gang perform
"Bat Boy: the Musical" with quirky humor and genuinely powerful
music.
Laurence O’ Keefe, Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming’s original
work, at Hollywood’s El Centro Space through Dec. 7, might easily
be dubbed "Edward Scissorhands: the Musical." It juxtaposes the
same 1950s cookie-cutter suburbia with the archetypal entrance of
the Outsider  in this case a young man with giant pointy ears
and a taste for blood, rather than a young man with pointy
scissor-blade fingers and a knack for styling hair.
Yet the similarities don’t eclipse "Bat Boy’s" uniqueness. The
scene opens with three rather dimwitted teenagers casting their
flashlight beams through very real on-stage fog. They literally
stumble upon some sort of screeching, initially naked mutant. Panic
ensues.
Cut to the opening number, the extremely catchy "Hold Me, Bat
Boy," performed by a lithe and vocally skilled ensemble. These cave
girls sport black page-boys and catwoman capes, side by side with
equally gothic guys in black lipstick. It’s over-the-top, yet quite
convincing, emerging victorious from the
reel-’em-in-or-make-’em-wish-for-intermission test that is the
first song of any musical.
Scene two is the Parker household, where the town sheriff (Don
Luce) tries to convince Meredith (Kaitlin Hopkins), wife of the
local veterinarian, to take the creature in. In a spoofily heroic
voice, Luce appeals to her "Christian charity." The song is
beautifully ironic as they erect a cage in the living room and
acknowledge, "We’re all God’s creatures, even that freak."
Hopkins delivers perhaps the best of many strong performances in
the Gang. At first she is prim, yet bitingly funny  sort of a
June Cleaver on PMS. Looking oh-so-Jackie-O in her tailored dress
and flipped hair, she smiles through perfectly lined lips and tells
her daughter, "Don’t talk like a slut, Shelley." As the plot
evolves, however, and Mr. and Mrs. Parker’s past becomes
increasingly mysterious, Meredith emerges as a passionate and
long-suffering character, finally able to stand up to her
domineering (and quite possibly evil) husband (Keythe Farley).
Unfortunately, Farley, the Nov. 15 stand-in for Chris Wells, is
not much of a singer. But he is clearly adept at his simultaneous
role as director, pacing the cast to truly capture "Bat Boy’s"
bittersweet humor, a la "Little Shop of Horrors."
They make full use of the small stage as various clumps of
bug-eyed townspeople gather between the audience and a makeshift
curtain to exchange tidbits of rapid-fire gossip. As three
curler-clad girls in mustache cream and several gun-toting farmers
weave tales about the Parkers’ new guest, Norman Rockwell’s famous
gossip painting comes to mind.
The most uproarious cultural allusion arrives toward the end of
the first act, when Meredith and Shelley play Henry Higgins, trying
to teach Bat Boy (whom they now call Edgar) how to be a proper
young gentleman. In "Show You a Thing or Two," Edgar goes from a
grunting, hunched-over Igor to an urbane member of the
intelligentsia in a matter of verses.
This Eliza Doolittle not only speaks, but speaks remarkably like
David Hyde Pierce on "Frasier" and earns triple-word scores playing
Scrabble. Deven May is perfectly cast as the maligned Bat Boy. His
stocky yet charismatic build allows him to move about believably as
both animal and human, and his sympathetic eyebrows immediately
garner the audience’s affection.
But "Bat Boy" truly excels when it is at its least familiar.
Though most of the musical’s main action can be likened to other
works, the ensemble’s interludes are truly bizarre and truly
artistic. After Edgar gets his first taste of blood, a group of
"Hallucinations" glide on stage in surgical masks and white robes
accented in glittering red. In a psychedelic marriage of religious
revival, hospital scene and dance club, they vogue in the strobe
lights, lifting Edgar up and whirling him around the stage urging,
"Fly!"
Similarly, the second act opens with Shelley and Edgar getting
back to nature after running away and falling in love. A "God of
the Forest" wearing only furry pants and horns emerges and leads
the young lovers and woodland creatures in "Children,
Children."
The number has a free-love, ’70s rock opera feel to it, but the
on-stage action is incomparable to anything, except maybe
Disneyland on acid; all the woodland creatures apparently take the
Forest God’s advice and procreate on the spot. Ensemble members in
furry masks and earth-toned leotards get it on in twos and threes
in various creative positions.
Meanwhile back in Hope Falls the plot thickens. Suffice it to
say that mad scientists, unusual breeding habits and stunningly
rendered bat puppets all have their moment to shine.
In the melodramatic finale, they work in a few life lessons
about the freaks in society. "He’s in every crowd," they sing, "He
says what no one says out loud. … Don’t deny your beast." And
finally, "Touch your Bat Boy, hold your Bat Boy."
With relatively few small theater companies venturing into
musical theater, a genre which lends itself to big budgets and
extravagant theatricality, it’s both refreshing and inspiring to
see the Actors’ Gang succeed so completely. It’s no wonder that
such notables as Robin Williams, Annette Bening, Tim Robbins, Bill
Pullman and Anthony Edwards appear on the program as board members
or supporters.
Supposedly, the true test of a musical is whether or not the
audience will leave the theater singing. If one extremely
uninhibited Saturday viewer had anything to say about it, "Bat Boy"
passed with flying, blood-red colors.
THEATER: "Bat Boy: The Musical" runs through Dec. 7 at the El
Centro Space, 6201 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Tickets are
$12. For more information, call (213) 660-8587.