Bat Boy: The Musical Brings Campy Cult Chaos to Workhouse Arts Center
Something strange has crawled out of a cave in Lorton, and it's playing through October 25. Workhouse Arts Center's production of Bat Boy: The Musical takes the infamous 1992 tabloid headline about a half-bat, half-human child discovered underground and spins it into two hours of gleefully unhinged rock-musical satire. The show, with a book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming and music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe, has been a cult favorite since the late 1990s, sitting comfortably alongside offbeat titles like Heathers and Little Shop of Horrors in the hearts of musical theatre fans who like their comedy dark and their earnestness undercut. Director Stephen Emery's staging leans into all of it.
The story opens in the fictional town of Hope Falls, West Virginia, where things are going badly. The slaughterhouse has closed, the ranchers' cattle are dying for no apparent reason, and the sheriff is sweating a reelection campaign. Into this mess stumble the three Taylor siblings, exploring a local cave with their phone flashlights, who discover a feral creature with pointed ears and a fondness for biting. The town needs someone to blame, and the creature they dub Bat Boy is a convenient target. He's hauled off to the home of local veterinarian Dr. Parker to be put down, but Parker's wife Meredith and teenage daughter Shelley intervene. Meredith is convinced that all the boy needs is a little Christian charity and a proper upbringing, and before long, with the help of BBC diction tapes, the creature has become Edgar, a polite young man with a posh accent and a burning desire to be accepted at the town's upcoming tent revival. Whether Hope Falls will accept him, and whether Edgar's animal nature can truly be tamed, drives a second act full of twists that this article won't spoil.
Matthew Monaghan anchors the production as Bat Boy, and his performance is a physical marvel. He climbs and hangs from the rigging above the stage, drops into scenes from above, and moves with a loose-limbed athleticism that reads as frightened child, dangerous cryptid, and wild animal all at once, often within the same moment. That he pulls this off while spending a good portion of the first act in almost nothing at all only makes it more impressive. When Edgar's civilized veneer cracks and the creature underneath springs back out in the second act, it is some of the most exciting stuff in the show.
The Parker household is well cast. Adian Chapman plays Dr. Parker with a brooding restraint that makes him magnetic rather than cartoonish, and the choice pays off handsomely as the good doctor's darker impulses surface. Melanie Kurstin's Meredith knows exactly when to push things over the top, and she lands both her opening moments and a late scene concerning Edgar's true parentage with real weight. Sasha Rosenbaum gives Shelley a sensible intelligence that keeps the audience rooting for her increasingly complicated relationship with Edgar. Brian Ashton, meanwhile, all but steals the show as Reverend Billy Hightower, working the tent revival number "A Joyful Noise" like a cross between a prophet and a showgirl. Michael Sherman's Sheriff Reynolds, Kyle Donovan, Olivia Levin, and Mel Gumina as the Taylor siblings, and the rest of the ensemble bring infectious energy to the raucous town hall scenes where Hope Falls' desperate citizens demand answers.
Sequoia Grace's scenic design makes clever use of the venue's intimate black box space, shifting quickly between the Parkers' living room and the town hall while keeping the damp darkness of the cave always lurking at the edges. The set's best trick comes when the walls of the Parker home seem to come alive, hands pressing through the wallpaper to warp the tidy suburban space, an effect heightened by Christina Giles's eerie lighting. Costumes by Merissa Martignoni and Natalie Turkevich, along with the ever-present smartphones, place the story firmly in the present day and nod to the idea that tabloid sensationalism has simply migrated from the supermarket checkout to our social feeds.
O'Keefe's score is stuffed with genuine earworms, and "Hold Me, Bat Boy" in particular has a way of following audiences home. Underneath the gags about ménages à trois, casual murder, and revival-tent theatrics is a surprisingly pointed allegory about how small communities treat outsiders, though the show never lets its message get in the way of a good joke. This is comic mayhem played at full volume, and it earns its frequent comparisons to The Rocky Horror Picture Show for its wholehearted commitment to camp.