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News: Pubs and theatre. An age-old pairing.
This exciting project will no doubt resonate with anyone that has ever stepped into a pub, so this February, grab your pint of Drunken Nights and witness something completely original and unique.
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News: The 28 Day Project launches wonderful opportunities
The 28 Day Project is an exciting initiative offering emerging talent a step into the film business.
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Have you got the Star Wars X Factor?
Thousands turned away at open auditions after standing in the rain for hours.
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News: TheatreCraft returns to help young people’s backstage careers
The 8th annual event returns to the Royal Opera House later this month.
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BLOG: Theatre: the best casino shows around the world
Casinos around the world offer some of the best theatrical entertainment you can find.
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BLOG: 5 Best Actors in Superhero Cinema
Is “superhero” acting any less challenging?
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Blog: Films to study for inspiration
Watching great actors can often inform your own work.
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Blog: Shakespeare experimenting with the limits of contemporary drama
Briony Rawle heads to Yorkshire and takes a closer look at Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
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Review: Bat Boy, Southwark Playhouse ✭✭✭
A campy fun musical with bite screams Douglas Mayo.
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Review: Visitors, Arcola Theatre ✭✭✭✭
Barney Norris first full-length play is an exquisitely written examination of love and loss, writes Alex Delaney.
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Review: 1984, Almeida Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭
This fresh vision of 1984 feels like a rediscovery of Orwell’s dystopia, writes Sophia Longhi.
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Review: Secret Theatre – Show 4, Lyric Hammersmith ✭✭✭✭
This review comes with a capitalised, emboldened and even italicised, SPOILER ALERT. That should do, writes Briony Rawle.
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Review: Bat Boy, Southwark Playhouse ✭✭✭
A campy fun musical with bite screams Douglas Mayo.
Add a commentWelcome To Hope Falls, a city inhabited by red-necks and simple closed-minded townspeople. When three doped out locals discover a ‘bat boy” in a deep cave and capture him all hell breaks loose. Giving him to local vet Dr Parker to have him put down, the doctors wife Meredith civilises and educates him.
Like Menken and Ashman’s Little Shop Of Horrors and Dempsey and Rowe’s Zombie Prom, Bat Boy seeks to take a bizarre story and turn it into a camp musical classic, although in the case of Bat Boy the story is based on a news feature in the World Weekly News published in 1992.
Bat Boy the musical mostly runs at a breakneck pace. The show’s energy comes from a hard-working ensemble of performers who play a plethora of parts including the Mayor, Mother Nature (no I’m not joking), a revival preacher, news reporters, the Sheriff, townsfolk and others. They’re all widely drawn characters with some of the tackiest wigs you will ever see on stage. The ensemble hold Bat Boy together and allow Rob Compton (Edgar the Bat Boy), Lauren Ward (Meredith Parker) and Georgina Hagen (Shelley Parker) a chance to savour special moments when the lunacy slows and some magical relationship comedy takes over.
There’s no doubt though that the night belongs to Rob Compton whose portrayal of the of Edgar the Bat Boy is part Nosferatu and part older Eddie Munster. His make-up is simple but sensational in its effect. Combined with Compton’s incredible physicality especially during the first part of the production. He actually makes you believe he’s been hanging bat like from the roof of a cave for over a decade.
Musically, the score and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe are fun and suitably catchy allowing some fabulous moments to develop. In A Home For You, a moment of emotional contact is turned into musical comedy gold as Meredith Parker (Lauren Ward) discovers a musical connection with Edgar.
It’s the central relationships between Edgar, Meredith and Shelley Parker that carries Bat Boy across the finishing line, but it’s a task that is made difficult by the shows book which seems to run out of fizz in the last twenty minutes of so. There’s no big show crescendo in Bat Boy which is a bit of a disappointment.
Benjamin Walden’s video designs are inspired and give Bat Boy a real comic book horror spoof to the proceedings. They are simple and never out of place, however a few sound synching problems with news footage marred a near faultless integration of video and projection with live action.
Luke Fredericks direction and Joey McKneely’s choreography is tight and functional. Sound wise some work needs to be done to balance out the shows driving rock score with the cast vocals which frequently got lost by sound imbalance.
Bat Boy is a lot of campy fun. I’ve missed Bat Boy’s previously UK incarnations and walked into the show without really knowing what to expect but have walked out a Bat Boy fan who will definitely be going back for seconds.
Bat Boy the musical is now playing at the Southwark Playhouse until 31 January. For more information visit www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk