Bat Boy: The Musical at Asheville Community Theatre
For those who grew up in the 1980s and ‘90s, the newsprint tabloid Weekly World News was a steadfast presence in the grocery store checkout aisle. Unlike its celebrity-focused neighbors, WWN heralded stories about beasts and supernatural phenomena like Bigfoot, UFOs, mermaid skeletons, and ominous omens. You could consider it a print media proto-X-Files, except the stories were so tongue-in-cheek and over-the-top that they held an immediate appeal for a generation steeped in cultural irony and raised on the camp weirdness of John Waters, the slack secrecy of the Church of the SubGenius, and the cult schlock of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Weekly World News was a special kind of dumb fun, and Bat Boy was perhaps its biggest front-page star. The bald, screeching visage of the half-human, half bat is burned in my memory — fangs, pointy ears, cherubic cheeks, and wide, black eyeballs. Since his first appearance following his discovery in a West Virginia cave in 1992, he has led police on several chases, evaded and been detained by the FBI, been cloned, fought in the Iraq War, and run for president.
Throughout all of these exploits, his image on the Weekly World News remained the same, mouth and eyes open wide, chin raised, nostrils flared. But despite his fearsome appearance, he never seemed angry or dangerous, mostly frightened, and perhaps — alone? Which begs the question: is Bat Boy OK? And just who is Bat Boy, really?
Fortunately for us, his origins were preserved in a 1997 off-Broadway production Bat Boy: The Musical. And even more fortunately, Asheville Community Theatre has brought the spectacle to the local stage for a funny, bloody, and even insightful wild romp to close out its 2022-23 season. The show takes a deep dive into just how Bat Boy came to be, and even spins some great mysteries of its own.
Setting the stage on opening night, director Stephanie Hickling Beckman addressed the audience with the directive to behave “like you lost your mind. Think Rocky Horror Picture Show. Just don’t throw shit…stuff…on the stage.” And while audience participation may not have escalated to dancing the “Time Warp,” Bat Boy: The Musical certainly has all the trappings of a cult classic.
The production wastes no time getting to Bat Boy’s introduction, as siblings Rick (Alec Shull), Ron (Jessica Gift), and Ruthie Taylor (Demon Thomas) stumble through the fateful cave (thanks to the playfully convincing set design by Jill Summers) outside the fictional town of Hope Falls West Virginia, only to stumble upon Bat Boy (Zoe Zelonky). The encounter is not without incident, and Ruthie is bitten by the creature as the trio subdue and bundle him into a sack.
But what to do with Bat Boy? The answer, it seems, is to take him to the home of the town’s veterinarian, Dr. Thomas Parker (Mark Jones), who sees euthanasia as the only option for such a freakish creature. Thankfully, for both Bat Boy and our story, the doctor’s wife Meredith (Meg Hale Brunton) and daughter Shelley (Grace Geoffrey) get to him first and begin to form their own bonds before the doctor can put him down. But those connections feed into both Meredith’s and Shelly’s own needs and desires as well. And things get, well, complicated.
As word of Bat Boy’s presence spreads through town, the locals begin to use the creature to fill in their own blanks — cows have been going missing, people are dying, the townsfolk are quick to feel danger. And this outsider Bat Boy is an easy scapegoat, even as he tries to assimilate himself to the above-ground world.
What will become of Bat Boy? What dark secrets lie in Hope Falls? Will Bat Boy ever find love?
I can’t answer these questions without spoiling some of the many twists of Bat Boy: The Musical, but be assured that the answers will be revealed in pretty satisfying, often humorous, sometimes macabre fashion as the play reveals where the danger in Hope Falls truly lives.
Zelonky shines as Bat Boy, being both hilarious and tragic. Her Bat Boy, much like the play itself, begins by revealing only a few key traits, but is revealed to be larger and more complex as the show goes on. Zelonky has it all: the singing voice, the dancing, the comedic chops, and her talent is engrossing — especially during “Show You a Thing or Two,” as Bat Boy straddles the line between bat instincts and human norms, switching back and forth between them in a lightning-fast theatrical equivalent of walking and chewing gum (or hula hooping and juggling) at the same time. (Note: despite my reminiscing at the top of this review, Zelonky’s Bat Boy is not bald. But do not fear — you’ll get used to it.)
Some 22 musical numbers, sung over pre-recorded tracks thanks to sound design by Casey Clennon, keep the story moving and draw plenty of campy laughs on their own. Numbers like “Hold Me Bat Boy” and “Another Dead Cow” are full of clues, background asides, and melodramatic humor, whereas “Dance With Me Darling” and the hip-hop laced “Watcha Wanna Do?” expose cracks in characters’ facades and the sinister nature therein.
The cast is excellent, and even the ensemble characters feel fleshed out and are fun to watch. If there is a play where it pays to keep an eye on the background characters’ reactions to all the strangeness going on, Bat Boy: The Musical is it, and I especially enjoyed watching Thomas and India Eddy (the latter of whom eventually also plays a young Meredith Jones) play off of one another as bystanders in the crowd during moments social panic.
Brunton and Geoffrey deliver roundly convincing portrayals of protective mother and awkwardly blossoming teen, respectively, while Jones, as the good Doctor, is effectively squirm-inducing with how casually he handles the euthanasia needle.
There are many places where Bat Boy: The Musical deserves mentions, but certainly watch for dance numbers by choreographer Kristi DeVille, and also the one-off but powerful gospel performance by music director Sharvis Smith as the Reverend Billie Hightower.
Behind torrid goth theatrics, Bat Boy’s story is a classic tale of the non-normative outsider spooking the locals and disrupting the status quo, feeding prejudice and panic, and providing the pressure for people to show their true colors. It is a theme in horror that goes back at least to Frankenstein, but ACT’s Bat Boy: The Musical feels like it shares more of a bloodline with Edward Scissorhands than Mary Shelley’s classic. And as a stage production, it would fit nicely between Little Shop of Horrors and Sweeney Todd, which are some bloody fun neighbors to have.
Bat Boy: The Musical runs through Sunday, Aug. 6, at Asheville Community Theatre. For details and tickets, visit ashevilletheatre.org.
(Photo courtesy of Asheville Community Theatre)
