9 – 20 August
Before the opening night, a convoy of over fifty Harley Davidsons roared past the Hippodrome before parking opposite and opening up their throttles to give a deafening roar. It was extremely noisy, full of bravado and reeked of somewhat camp masculinity but left me worrying about whether the show might also be all revved up with nowhere to go.
Bat out of Hell is a juke box musical based on the music of writer Jim Steinman and singer Meatloaf, who both passed away prematurely in their early fifties last year. Their version of rock and roll was characterised by dramatic big-hearted power ballads, overblown raw emotion and of course the larger than life vocals provided by Meatloaf himself. How could all that be converted into a musical without resorting to simply bashing out the hits?
The device chosen did not sound promising. The songs are interspersed around a dystopian narrative rather loosely based on Peter Pan with a mixture of post-apocalyptic Mad Max and more than a dash of Romeo and Juliet.
The Lost are a street gang who can’t grow old, led by a sexually charged wild-eyed rebel called Strat. Opposing them is a tyrannical ruler named Falco who operates a brutal private army and is obsessed about protecting his eighteen-year-old daughter, Raven. Combined with a full array of explosions, CGI video, frenetic strobe lighting and offstage sonic booms it sounds completely bonkers. Added to the mix is a roving camera which live projects images onto two large screens like an episode from Big Brother. It most definitely should not work, but the oddest thing about the whole show is that it does.
Hometown girl Martha Kirby from Downend, plays Raven with the right mixture of sweetness tinged with teenage frustration and the opening tableaux with her parents the superb Rob Fowler as Falco and Franziska Schuster as Sloane set the scene.
Raven is closeted away in her room and needs to be sheltered from the hip thrusting, bare chested and tousle haired Strat. Reasonable enough, you might think. However, the parents have romantic problems of their own and the dual narrative nicely dovetails the star-crossed lovers throughout the show.
An early standout scene involving a chorus of waiters looking like they have been dragged out of A Clockwork Orange boogie on down while Falco and the sensual Sloane re-enact their wooing on top of a convertible. It is a sublime moment, even more so because they don’t hesitate to send themselves up. The live action camera interspersed with old baseball footage does the original ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ huge credit.
Both James Chisholm as Jagwire and Joelle Moses as Zahara make a great couple, their powerful singing matching the splendidly overwhelming pyrotechnics on ‘Dead Ringer for Love’.
Killian Thomas Lefevre as Tink offers a further alternative take on the James Barrie classic while the entire chorus stalk, gyrate and smoulder with occasional sexual fluidity in scene after scene. The songs themselves do not feel squashed in to fit the narrative and the fact that Jim Steinman was responsible for the book as well as music lends credence to the lyrics and storytelling.
Musical direction led by Iestyn Griffiths keeps the whole place rocking with what must be loudest musical on the road.
So, did it deliver? There is certainly a huge serving of epic exciting drama and intensely tasty extravagant emotion. We didn’t get Meatloaf himself, but what the hell…’Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad’.
★★★★☆ Bryan Mason 10th August, 2022
Photo credit: Chris Davis Studio
