Bat Out of Hell: The Musical – New York City Center

Picture: Little Fang Photo

Bat Out of Hell: The Musical continues at New York City Center until 8 September 2019.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Bat Out of Hell: The Musical has enjoyed the sweet smell of success (its Manchester world premiere in 2017, repeat engagements in London and Toronto) and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (abruptly cancelled North American tour dates).

But now it has finally made it to New York – not Broadway – but nevertheless New York, where it’s exploding with mega-force in the venerable New York City Center. That’s the 2,200-plus-seat home of the beloved and considerably more sedate Encores! series, reprising Broadway musicals of the past.

The show, a dystopian tale built around the songs Jim Steinman created for the 1977 gargantuan-selling Meat Loaf album Bat Out of Hell and its two sequels, shows no signs of fatigue.

And the 20-person company, a blend of original cast members and recent replacements, plays together with an exuberant camaraderie. (No hint of resentment that along with cancelled tour dates, the New York engagement has been shortened to about six weeks from the originally announced eight.)

They give the Steinman score – marked by a surprising tunefulness and deft humour for the rock genre – such high-powered musical validity it makes you forget or at least forgive the holes, repetitions and bothersome lack of plausibility in Steinman’s fever-dream of a script.

In case it’s slipped your mind, the show takes place in Obsidian, a floating island that used to be Manhattan until a cataclysmic explosion sent it out to sea. The town is ruled over by the malevolent police chief Falco, whose nemesis is a group of Lost Boys, most of whom the explosion has frozen at their 18 years of age.

While the Lost Boys, led by one named Strat, live it up with youthful hijinks among the ruins, Falco dwells in luxury with his quip- and alcohol-prone wife Sloane and their over-sheltered, sullen but volatile daughter, Raven, just turning 18.

Almost with their first glimpse, Raven and Strat fall in love, but nothing runs smoothly, of course, until the celebratory ending, with the whole company assuring us ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’… whatever that may be. But the song does overcome Raven’s eventual hesitation about linking up with Strat: he’ll always be 18 while she ages.

At the centre of it all is Andrew Polec’s dynamic turn as Strat, emulating rock star magnetism with musical theatre discipline. He created the role in the Manchester premiere, been playing it mostly ever since and still exudes an unpredictability, a sense of spontaneity. It’s a daredevil turn, whether he’s standing on the seat of his motorcycle or juggling a mic on a cord while blasting out the title tune.

Matching Polec in vocal prowess as well as athletic dexterity is the Raven of Christina Bennington, another original cast member. Ultimately, she even imbues the spoiled-girl persona with a touch of charm.

Most prominent among the newcomers is Lena Hall, a Tony Award winner for her turn as Yitzhak in the Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. She hardly lets a laugh go by as Sloane and brings powerhouse ardour to her big numbers.

She shares some of those numbers with Bradley Dean, a Broadway veteran embodying Falco with ferocity and fun. When he and Hall unveil their inner teenagers, recalling their characters’ first amorous get-together in ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’, it takes on epic proportions.

And it happens again, when the two, for all intents and purposes, threaten to actually sing their guts out in ‘What Part of My Body Hurts the Most’.

Also exceptional is the sultry rendition of ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad’ by the Zahara of Danielle Steers, another original cast member, sung to and with Lost Boy Jagwire, played by Tyrick Wiltez Jones. Along with being a Lost Boys cohort, Zahara works as a nurse to Raven, helping to foster the romance with Strat. (Yes, there are echoes of Romeo and Juliet in Steinman’s book as well as the usually cited Peter Pan.)

Director Jay Scheib probably deserves medals for his handling of the show’s diverse elements: in book scenes as well as musical numbers the performers take focus just as they should, against the onslaught of technical elements.

It lends some amount of coherence to the clamorous storytelling, even as the production works pretty much non-stop in revving up rock concert fervour, from the eight-piece pit band (Ryan Cantwell is music director and plays one of three keyboards; Michael Reed is musical supervisor and credited with additional arrangements) to the explosions of light and sound designed by Patrick Woodroffe and Gareth Owen, respectively.

Also impressive are the costumes going from rock-ragged to sequin-glitter and the complex set with its various vignettes blown up in almost constant giant-sized video together with actor closeups against the murky background of Obsidian. They apparently spring from a maze of credits: Edward Pierce (design adaptation); Jon Bausor (set and costume designer), and Meentje Nielsen (original costume designer). Finn Ross is the video designer.

As for the choreography – so robotic it’s almost a happy parody – it’s “adapted by Xena Gusthart”.

But whoever did what, rest assured that despite setbacks, Bat Out of Hell roars on.

              Ron Cohen