The Best (and Worst) of Y2K Shock Humor: Bat Boy Review

City Center 's producing model has always struck me as an interesting one. You offer a cast of recognizable Broadway names, spend less than two weeks rehearsing, and stage a production with minimal sets and a few scripts in hand to sold out crowds at one of New York City's largest capacity theatres. It's a recipe that's capable of cranking out fun theatre, but I'm not sure of its track record of making good theatre.

Bat Boy was a perfect example of this. It tells the story of the fictional tabloid creature dreamt up by Weekly World News in 1997, exploring what might happen if he were real and a local family attempted to integrate him into society.

Yes, it was fun. No, it was not good.

When I saw it the day after Halloween, it took the cast and the orchestra a little time to get on the same page. The timing and rhythm felt a bit off through the first song or two, an effect similar to when the audio and video gets out of sync in a Netflix stream. Luckily, these issues quickly faded away, leaving Bat Boy to stand on its merits, such as they may be.

The book allegedly got a refresh for this production, but it still feels painfully early-2000s. The script is sprinkled with cheap jokes, none more cringe-inducing than the barrage of "ball and chain," "haha my wife sucks" bits that the text subjects Christopher Sieber (Dr. Taylor) to delivering. Likewise left alone in the refresh of the 2001 cult classic was the ungodly amount of exposition. It felt constant through both scene and song. I'll admit I'm sensitive to this–too much exposition is one of my common gripes with the musical format–but watching Bat Boy, I couldn't help but wonder if the writer's room had a banner up on the wall imploring: "TELL, DON'T SHOW!"

Despite being shackled to a poor script, there are individual performances that make it a worthwhile ticket. Kerry Butler (Meredith) impresses vocally; her performance on "A Home For You" had me jotting down my first positive note of the show.¹ She's also clearly a generous scene partner, building great onstage chemistry particularly with Gabi Carrubba (Shelley). You'd never know that–by her own admission in the post show talk-back–she was focusing intently to not accidentally sing Shelley's harmonies or say Shelley's lines, having played that part in the original cast 20 years ago. Andrew Durand (Rick Taylor) is dynamic in his villain-esque role, with particularly fine execution on "All Hell Breaks Loose" before meeting his demise. Good thing he's had plenty of reps lately with staying still on stage. Smaller ensemble pieces work great as well. "Deer in the Headlights" sees Butler, Durand, John-Michael Lyles (Ron Taylor), Olivia Puckett (Ruthie Taylor) and Taylor Trensch (Bat Boy) meshing wonderfully. But larger, full ensemble songs like "Comfort and Joy," "Christian Charity," "Hold Me Bat Boy," and the Finale don't meet the same bar of quality. Maybe it's just the nature of an inherently rushed rehearsal process, or maybe Nevin Steinberg's sound design misses the mark, but when more than four or five performers are singing together, things get unfortunately muddled.

Trensch's performance is a particular highlight throughout, sure to please patrons who, like my wife and me, bought tickets in large part because of his billing in the title role. Vocally, Trensch impresses start to finish; from his feral screeching as the just-captured cave creature, to his progression as Bat Boy gets the Pygmalion treatment from the Taylor family, the range is solid. With the help of Kate Wilson's excellent dialect coaching, he nails his final-form posh British accent.

Bat Boy's physicality, on the other hand, deserves further discussion.

First, the good. Trensch executes the progression of Bat Boy from feral cave-child to refined aspiring-citizen excellently, with snappy and pointed regressions to the terrified creature we first meet in moments of heightened stress or conflict. David Korins has designed a fairly basic set which does a great job at providing a playground for Trensch's Bat Boy to skitter all over during the early, more animalistic scenes, and Trensch takes full advantage.

However, when fresh-out-of-the cave Bat Boy is more stationary, things get dicey. Lorenzo Pisoni worked to develop the "creature physicality" of Trensch's Bat Boy, and a lot of the choices they've made just don't work well. At the best moments, it feels a bit basic, a Gollum-esque, menacing, all-fours locomotion that might be any movement student's immediate go-to for "feral half boy half bat creature." At the worst moments, Trensch cuts an unfortunate–and I am sure unintentional–echo of a 2016 Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter, flapping the hands haphazardly pulled close to the chest. Bat Boy reads to me as an allegorical representation of a disabled or developmentally delayed child. Which would be an interesting way to take things if it were intentional and tactfully explored, but it is not.

Blissfully, these uncomfortable moments are short lived.

The second act is stronger than the first. Jacob Ming-Trent (Rev. Hightower) leads the company in one of the better full-ensemble pieces, "A Joyful Noise," before Trensch delivers the genuinely funny "Let Me Walk Among You." Butler and Carrubba shine above the rest with an exceptional duet on "Three Bedroom House" that turns from funny to touching and back again on a dime. Alas, things go off the rails rather quickly after that, and there's no one to blame but the writers. "Children Children"–A.K.A "the woodland creatures have gathered to teach you how to bang"–feels dated in its ridiculousness, a relic of the Y2K era shock humor that Bat Boy is at its core.

Thankfully, the pacing moves things along rather quickly and before you know it the plot twists are all coming out to play on giant platters overflowing with yet more exposition, before the show's grisly, dramatic, deadly end. We close (of course) with the entire cast downstage, singing the very basic lessons of the show, literally imploring the audience not to judge others, or "deny the beast inside."

Lost in the sea of cheap laughs and shocking moments is a truly dark storyline. Sieber's Dr. Taylor looks like Mr. Rogers with a belt knife, but he's barely on stage for a full scene before he threatens to euthanize the caged Bat Boy unless his wife agrees to sleep with him. His villain turn is obvious by the point he is murdering neighborhood children and pinning it on our protagonist, but the guy has been a villain from the very beginning. Bat Boy's origin story, told by Dr. Taylor with a shadow puppet style projection in "Revelations," basically boils down to "I spilled pheromones on my assistant, which drove me to assault her. On her way home, the pheromones drove a bunch of bats crazy too, and they also assaulted her. When we found out she was pregnant, we got married and skipped town to build a new life in Hope Falls." It's dark as hell! But in Bat Boy, it's just another piece of shock humor.

Which begs the question... why do Bat Boy today? Especially in a format like City Center's where you aren't going to have nearly enough time to make a new, fresh examination of it. It's not like it has anything unique or important to say, and it's got a bunch of sticky issues you'd expect from a piece of Y2K era shock humor. I guess it has some amount of cult classic appeal, but should that be enough to launch a production? I certainly don't think so.

This question did seem to get answered, if not directly, in the post show talkback led by Artistic Director Jenny Gersten. Gersten and City Center wanted to bring director Alex Timbers in for a show. Timbers only had two shows he was interested in doing. Bat Boy was one of them. And so, here we are.

I won't say don't go; tickets are accessible at City Center and Bat Boy is, like most of their productions, certainly fun... just set your expectations properly and don't think too much about it.

1: For you inside-baseball sickos, it was an illegibly scrawled "mom sing good!"