Bat Boy: The Musical October 11, 2007

Bat Boy: The Musical is an Off-Broadway musical based on Bat Boy, a character whose antics regularly appear in the Weekly World News tabloid. The story about a half-boy, half-bat found living in a cave inspired bookwriters Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming to write a stage adaptation. They were joined by American composer/lyricist Laurence O'Keefe (no relation to the English bassist Laurence O'Keefe), and their first production premiered on Halloween, 1997.

The musical differs in a few of its plot details from the Weekly World News portrayal of Bat Boy. In the musical, Bat Boy learns to speak from his adoptive family, yearns for acceptance and tries to join society, only to face hatred and violence from a town that fears him and jealous rage from his foster father. Although full of blood, violence, incest and interspecies sex, Bat Boy: The Musical has won several awards and rave reviews. John Lahr of The New Yorker observed that "this is the only play in the history of the theatre whose hero ends Act I with a rabbit in his mouth, and who moves on in Act II to an entire cow's head."

This musical premiered at Tim Robbins' Actors' Gang Theatre on October 31, 1997 and has since been produced Off-Broadway, in London's West End, at the Edinburgh Festival and in scores of productions throughout the world. The musical was awarded best Off-Broadway musical by both the Lucille Lortel Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award in 2001. Regional productions of Bat Boy have been nominated for and won dozens of awards, including the Norton Awards (New England's equivalent of the Tony) and Ovation Awards (Los Angeles). It entered regional theatre in 2002 beginning with the Phoenix Theatre. The show has also proven quite popular in Korea and Japan.

Official Website: http://www.glendale.cc.ca.us/theatre/productions/Bat%20Boy/Bat%20Boy%20Flyer.htm