BAT BOY Coming To Broadway?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/24/14 at 3:33pm

Link Updated On: 10/24/14 at 03:33 PM

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 10/24/14 at 4:37pm

More changes?

[Wickedmonkey332]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 4:38pm

This would be the best thing ever. God I love this show.

[darquegk]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 5:30pm

I agree- I love this show, but I doubt a polish job would hurt it much. O'Keefe has learned his craft much better since then, working on a number of other somewhat campy cult musicals. There are a few songs in Bat Boy that just don't work, and this could fix the show and make it into the powerhouse it always felt like it almost could have been.

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 5:48pm

I hope they cut "Children, Children." The rest I hope they leave mostly intact. I've rarely laughed so hard at the theater than at BAT BOY. And the music is great too.

[Back Row]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 5:52pm

Andrew Keenan-Bolger?

[tazber]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 6:12pm

Another huge fan here.

I must say that I am as surprised as I am thrilled though.

It never struck me as being a show that would attract a sizable audience.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 10:03pm

AK-B, no, Jeremy Jordan.

[theatregeek6]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 10:05pm

Never saw the original. Like most of the score. Would love to see it on broadway

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/25/14 at 11:14pm

This was one of those shows where I could not breathe from laughing so hard. It would be great to relive that.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 10/26/14 at 1:06am

I think it would work beautifully on Broadway. Would it be successful? I don't know. But it's not my money.

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 10/26/14 at 4:28pm

I don't think BAT BOY is a Broadway musical. The scale and scope of the show was perfectly at home in the intimacey of Off-Broadway. It could certainly benefit from some work but to try to inflate it to a Broadway-sized musical would, IMHO, be a mistake.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 10/26/14 at 9:02pm

But it wasn't really in an intimate space Off-Broadway. The show ran at the Union Square Theatre which is 499 seats and has a rather large stage. There are Broadway houses which feel more intimate than that space, even if they do have more seats.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 10/27/14 at 7:42am

First step -- cut the rap.

[darquegk]

Posted: 10/27/14 at 11:16am

The rap was gone as of London, wasn't it? It was tied to such a specific place in time, when pissed-off rap metal from Rage Against the Machine to Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park ruled the airwaves that it seems even more anachronistic than anything else in the show now.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 10/27/14 at 11:28am

I'll take your word for it. The only iteration of the show I know is the 2001 UST production, and it didn't even work there.

[tazber]

Posted: 10/27/14 at 3:07pm

Wait, are you talking about that little rap in Watcha Wanna Do?

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 10/27/14 at 3:11pm

Yeahhh, taz. But I think the whole number is pretty rap-ish and none of it works. I remember it playing supes awks, too.

[darquegk]

Posted: 10/27/14 at 4:34pm

"Watcha Wanna Do" is a pretty banal parody of early, pre-peak Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as of Zak De La Rocha and Fred Durst, who were iconic to the kind of angsty lower-class semi-suburban white kids that "Bat Boy" skewers in the Taylor family. Rage Against the Machine's legacy has held up much better than that of the other rap-metal stars, so the weirdly specific musical moment there has been replaced with a more generic but less dated and stilted number, "Hey, Freak" in the British version and presumably in the new revisal.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 10/28/14 at 10:17am

Funny, I loathe rap but found that material spot-on in BAT BOY. I always loved the end of the first act, "Comfort and Joy," but heard they were messin' with that. It's the song on the CD I'm most likely to play.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 10/28/14 at 10:27am

I love "Comfort and Joy." I'll usually hit "back" and play it a couple of times before moving on.

[tazber]

Posted: 10/28/14 at 11:42am

The only song I don't love is Children, Children.

I always replay:

A Home For You
Comfort and Joy
Three Bedroom House
Inside Your Heart
Apology to a Cow

[Broadwayboobs]

Posted: 10/28/14 at 11:49am

I saw the original production 3 times. So I guess you can say I really enjoyed this show. One of those performances the cast was collecting for Broadway Cares and I handed Kaitlin Hopkins and Kerry Butler $20. You would have thought I handed them a million. They were so excited and handed me a window card signed by the entire cast. There was something about that moment that always makes me smile.

[ChrisTyler12882]

Posted: 10/28/14 at 11:51am

Children, Children is one of my favorite numbers!

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 10/28/14 at 12:17pm

Sean McCourt gave what is still one of my all-time favorite comedic performances as Dr. Parker.