'Bat Boy' With Bite: High-Camp, Low-Art Satirical Cave Musical

2nd Flight Productions is blowing the roof off the Cramer Center with its rousing, over-the-top, thoroughly twisted and quite enjoyable production of "Bat Boy: The Musical."

The start of the troupe's third season is taking wing with the darkly comic morality tale based on a character from the low-rent supermarket tabloid Weekly World News, a creature part bat and part human supposedly found in a West Virginia cave. With an eclectic, rock-based score, sharply witty lyrics and weird plot turns, this peculiar mix of camp whimsy and musical comedy satire has a lot of bite.

Director Shannon Khatcheressian hints in her program notes that the group undertook the production with a bit of trepidation, concerned that conservative Manassas audiences might look askance at the show. It takes on Christian hypocrisy, skewers small-town mores and musical comedy conventions, all the while layering in a subtle message of tolerance and acceptance. But the show so outrageously takes on everything in its path, including itself, that it would seem difficult for any group to feel singled out.

With a "Rocky Horror Show" sensibility, "Bat Boy" borrows from musicals as disparate as "My Fair Lady," "Sweeney Todd" and "The Who's Tommy" to come up with a surprisingly original concoction.

Khatcheressian has taken liberties with the show that make it more accessible to local audience tastes, but without diluting its impact. She has replaced the opening scene, in which three teens stumble on Bat Boy in a cave, with a video showing cast members at an actual cave, a reminder of "Rocky Horror." Bloodshed is minimized, and several scenes of aberrant lascivious behavior, especially one featuring randy forest animals, have been toned down to PG-13 levels.

Khatcheressian also has her talented cast play up the campy aspects of their performances, rather than presenting perfectly straight faces, as is usually the case. There is something deliciously funny about seeing ridiculous characters portrayed without apparent irony. But that is a subtle pleasure she has perhaps wisely decided to forgo, opting instead for surefire, audience-pleasing shtick.

None of it dulls the knife wielded by writers Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming, and composer/lyricist Laurence O'Keefe, that won the show "Best Off-Broadway Musical" honors in 2001.

Unlike other groups performing in the Cramer Center, 2nd Flight Productions uses the theater arts to full effect. The front of the theater is transformed into a cavelike world, with different mounted sets that can be rapidly switched between scenes. Sophisticated lighting and sound effects are thoroughly integrated, immeasurably enhancing the performances. (Set, lighting, and sound are all designed by Kevin King.) A small but tight band conducted by Robert Kraig blasts out the complex score, with its rock, pop, rap, tango, gospel, folk ballad, and hoedown numbers. With pitch-perfect performances from the 10-member cast, this production rivals the one staged by the top-notch Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., a few seasons back.

Bat Boy, played with sweet-faced, innocent idiocy by Ryan Khatcheressian, is taken to the home of the local veterinarian, Doctor Parker, played by Randall Jones, as the unsettled backwoods community considers killing him for biting one of the teenagers who found him, and for the mysterious deaths of local cows. Bat Boy is renamed "Edgar" by Meredith, the vet's love-starved wife, played as a combination of June Cleaver and Lady Macbeth by Molly Hicks, and he begins to blossom into a proper gentleman under her tutelage. A highlight is the "My Fair Lady" parody song, "Show You a Thing or Two," in which Meredith sweetly sings that "A bit more schooling, a lot less drooling" would benefit him.

Khatcheressian shows off his soaring tenor in such songs as "Let Me Walk Among You" while Jones excels in the lilting "Dance With Me Darling." This show also marks the return to local stages of the petite dynamo, Tara Leigh Moore, after too long an absence. She plays teenage Shelley Parker, who begins by seeing Bat Boy as a pet and ends up falling in love. Moore and Hicks stop the show with their duet, "Three-Bedroom House."

The bright production number "Joyful Noise" opens Act Two with an all-out gospel revival led by Cory Eskridge's Reverend Hightower and most of the company. The song generated an arena-level explosion of applause, screams and whistles at a recent evening performance. Eskridge and Carla Okouchi strongly anchor the company players who take on a variety of roles. Okouchi has no solo songs, but she uses her expressive face to add comic coloring to each of her scenes.

Intolerance, jealousy, dark secrets, fear and mysterious deaths (not to mention Edgar's penchant for drinking fresh blood) soon bring out the worst in everybody, and the story descends into tragedy, although not before we are treated to the spectacle of Bat Boy singing his "Apology to a Cow."

The Cramer Center had a boisterous crowd on hand for the performance this reviewer attended. Members of the audience exhibited a wide age range, but twenty-somethings, usually the least likely theatergoers, were heavily represented. That alone, aside from the show's artistic success, means 2nd Flight's gamble has paid off. Because without young people in those seats, local theater will have no future.

"Bat Boy: The Musical" continues through Saturday, performed by 2nd Flight Productions at the Cramer Center Theatre, 9008 Center St., Manassas. Showtime Fridays and Saturdays is 8 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee today. For tickets and information, visithttp://www.2ndflightproductions.comor call 703-927-5438.