Review: An Uneven Flight for BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL at Umbrella Arts

When it comes to supermarket tabloids, “Weekly World News” makes “The National Enquirer” look Pulitzer Prize-worthy.

The publication did prove award-worthy itself, though, as the inspiration for the scary and silly “Bat Boy: The Musical” – at Umbrella Arts in Concord through November 8 – which took home the 2001 Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical. Composer and lyricist Laurence O’Keefe – who co-wrote “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” with wife Nell Benjamin, and “Heathers: The Musical” – and book writers Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming based the hit rock musical on a June 23, 1992, “Weekly World News” front-page story entitled “Bat Boy Found in Cave!” and its subsequent serialization.

The two-act cult musical premiered at The Actors’ Gang in Culver City, California, in 1997 and has since been mounted off-Broadway, in London’s West End, at the Edinburgh Festival, and in numerous productions worldwide, including an unforgettable 2001–02 SpeakEasy Stage Company production, reprised in 2003, that was Elliot Norton Award nominated and remains one of the longest-running hits in that theater’s 36-year history.

Under Jeremy Johnson’s uneven direction, the Umbrella Arts production is far from a smooth proposition. It sometime soars but too often sputters in the hands of a spotty cast, with some terrific performances but some that aren’t ready for primetime.

As Edgar/Bat Boy, Johnny Shea – winner of the 2026 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Leading Role as Jon in “Tick, Tick… Boom!” at Umbrella Arts in fall 2025 – is the all-star in this production, too. His voice is in full form on act one’s “A Home for You” and on “Let Me Walk Among You” in act two, while his nimble movements, choreographed by Briana Fallon, and physical-comedy melding of a teenage boy and a bat make Shea’s every move worth watching.

The campy but affecting plot has Bat Boy found in a West Virginia cave by locals who bring him to the nearest veterinarian, Dr. Thomas Parker (Brian Demar Jones), and his wife Meredith (Amy Barker). The Parkers then bring the bald, pointy-eared Bat Boy into their home, with their daughter Shelley (Michelle Moran), renaming him Edgar.

A new name and natty new look may not be enough, however, to diminish Edgar’s taste for blood. His desire to stay on the straight and narrow and find a place where he can be himself is also undercut by some of the smalltown locals including Dr. Parker, who soon resents Edgar for his growing closeness with his wife and daughter, the overbearing Mrs. Taylor (Maria Sylvia Norris, who also plays Rev. Hightower), and others who don’t want him around.

Davron S. Monroe is a stand-out as Pan, a Greek God of Nature, on “Children, Children,” an act-two romantic awakening for Bat Boy and Shelley, while Norris, as Rev. Hightower, raises the rafters on the act-two opener, “A Joyful Noise.”

Actor and singer Barker has given many fine performances in Boston area musicals including “A Little Night Music,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” and “Merrily We Roll Along,” at The Huntington, but here, on “Show You a Thing or Two” and “Three Bedroom House,” she makes little impression on what should be great musical moments. She acquits herself nicely, however, in her comedic acting scenes.

Where the production gets tripped up is in the all-cast numbers, which, striving for quirkiness, are just amateurish. That aside, music director Jeff Kimball, sound designer Alex Berg, lighting designer SelfAllah Soloto-Cristobal, scenic designer Cameron McEachern, and Costume Designer Meaghan Ballao all deserve mention for their contributions to the look and feel of the production, which comes in at two hours, including a 15-minute intermission.

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