2025 Bat out of Hell The Musical

[nightinr]

What does everybody think of the updated version of the musical?

[ThatWriterGuy]

[letsgotoofar]

That about sums up my reaction.

[Nige78]

Originally Posted by nightinr

What does everybody think of the updated version of the musical?

What has changed?

[letsgotoofar]

This covers everything from the Manchester opening in 2017 to NY, 2019. There have been more since then, but I can't be arsed to keep track of them all. Someone else may chime in.

[Nige78]

Originally Posted by letsgotoofar

This covers everything from the Manchester opening in 2017 to NY, 2019. There have been more since then, but I can't be arsed to keep track of them all. Someone else may chime in.

Thanks - I really wasn't expecting such an in-depth answer!

[ianmar]

I'm going tonight in Glasgow for the first time. I don't know why but it doesn't seem to have sold particularly well this time around.

[ianmar]

Bloody hell it was good! If they weren't all having an absolute ball onstage then they deserve an oscar. Second half much stronger than the first imo but musically it was sound throughout with some amazing vocals. I found it slightly emotional in a couple of places when I though of Jim and Meat no longer being with us.

The only negative thing I found was some elements of the vocal performance of Glenn Adamson in the lead role. What I always loved about Meat is that he performed songs with the most ridiculous and sometimes hilarious lyrics and belted them out as if they were life or death serious. Most of the cast did the same but Glenn was continually laughing or even winking to the audience during big songs and I found that kind of camp performance to be inappropriate. Generally, I thought Glenn was fantastic and the real star of the show. I'd just like him to have performed the songs with a little more of the Meat Loaf emotion.

Definitely worth seeing for anyone who gets the chance. I'm taking my daughter again next week before they close in Glasgow.

[ajf33]

https://tixel.com/u/marieh41

My partner is selling 2 stall tickets for the 24th may 2.30 performance if anyone is interested! £100 each (face value £118 each)

[ajf33]

https://tixel.com/u/marieh41

Now £80 each

[ajf33]

Willing to take £100 for the pair if anyone is interested, tickets ready to transfer via pdf.

[ajf33]

Now sold.

[AndrewG]

Finally seeing it this week.

Thought I would be forced to go during the week but easy availability even for Saturday night.
Which probably isn't a good sign.

I'm expecting good performances but a bottom of the barrel show / plot. Probably on par with We Will Rock You or even worse.

After having seen the excellent Tina! show last year I wish this had just been a personal autobiographical show about Jim & Meat.

• Their meeting
• Funny stuff about struggling to get a record deal
• Funny stuff recording Bat (Todd Rundgren being a bit of a funny jackass)
• Rise to fame with Bat out of Hell,
• Meat meeting his first wife (Took the words right out of my mouth),
• Jim recording solo and it bombing and Meat recording Dead Ringer struggling with voice.
• Meat almost killing himself with drugs (ending with Bat out of Hell for Act 1 probably apt here)
  
• Jim recording with Bonnie Tyler, (open act 2 with rehearsal of Total Eclipse into the full song).
• Meat struggling in the 80s but touring his ass off
• Meat & Jim back together for their extraordinary comeback with Bat 2,
• falling out again somewhat over the Bat 3 and the naming etc
• and ending with their friendship rekindled for eternity with Braver Than We are as the finale. (Meat / Jim / Ellen / Karla)

What a missed opportunity in hindsight.

Their own story was far better than what anyone could have ever imagined!

Will post my thoughts after I see this carry on what we got though.

[ThatWriterGuy]

Something to keep in mind: What you see this week will bear little resemblance to the 2017 show -- which was still a hugely wasted opportunity, sadly.

Regardless -- have a good time. Curious to hear what you make of it in its current incarnation.

[ThatWriterGuy]

Some background RE Jim's original intention VS what you get circa 2025.

Family.

It was all about family, generations, youth -- and what that really means -- VS the jaded way in which the nuclear family has been portrayed over the past couple decades (or more). Jim wanted to tap into that. You have this almost nostalgic version of Americana coupled with the slow, creeping erosion of a post apocalyptic Nanny State.

There was some pretty heady stuff in the original drafts we worked on.

Not so much now, but elements still remain.

I'm not a fan of: the choreography, the costumes (still - though they attempted to remedy this, multiple times, after my feedback during previews in Manchester), the Glee-like performance VS the "rebellious rock concert overtaking the theater stage" that Jim intended.

Did you -- any of you -- know that Jim FULLY intended on using Oculus headset tech to completely reinvent the notion of theater as we know it?

True story.

And yet. Any yet.

The question lingers: Does ANY of this REALLY feel like BAT OUT OF HELL to you?

The story, imagery, and characters that we grew up with (from both records)?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[letsgotoofar]

I mean, I'll level with ya, I never bought the Peter Pan shit. Not in a million years. Jim may have used it as a starting point, but was light years away from any of that by the time Neverland was reaching maturation in the '70s and '80s; once you hit Bat Out of Hell 2100 in the '90s, the clearest antecedent of the Bat we have now (or had from approximately 2016 to around 2018 or '19), any influence was vestigial at best.

And in any event, as fun as a grim-dark reboot can be, here's my controversial hot take (as the kids say), influenced by numerous conversations with my dramaturgical creative partner: he didn't get Peter Pan at all, if that's what he got out of it. (Substitute character names from Bat wherever you like in what follows; although the Peter Pan mythos is essentially wisdom teeth to this thing, enough is infused in the structure that you can do so.)

It's not actually about youth, except in the sense of how brilliant it feels to have it when you're a child. The story isn't about whether eternal youth, joy, and freedom turn you into Caligula; in a certain sense, you don't need to make it any darker to portray that. (By which I mean: Peter is kind of a little monster already in-text, a profoundly unnatural and blithely uncaring child, because he's a representation of childhood. And it's worth noting, he is a child. Disney and the 2003 film, for all their respective virtues, were pushing it by making him a young teen. To make his analogue forever seventeen? Baby, that's a grown-up by Peter Pan standards. Even in 2003, there's a vague sense that one of the reasons Wendy has to leave him behind is that he gets kissing, he gets crushes, but he's not going to be able to meet her on her maturing level. Making your Peter Pan figure emblematic of the thrill of sex as a teenager means he's no longer Peter Pan. You've swerved off the road, to use a metaphor Steinman might have liked.)

It's about Wendy, and more specifically, her realizing she does want to grow up. She's ready to go back home, to get a room of her own, to remember this as one last grand hurrah of childhood (and a grander one, at that, than most people will ever get).

Making it a story about reckless young adults who are trapped as reckless young adults, and not gleefully arrested children and the girl who realizes she doesn't want this, fundamentally changes the story. There's a story there, but it's not the story of Peter Pan. The fact that the Lost are all so aware of how much they've aged internally is diametrically opposed to Peter Pan. (By comparison, think about how the film The Lost Boys isn't concerned much with Peter Pan beyond the allusion in the title. The allusion there works despite these being permanent young adults because they don't have much sense of their age. They're frozen older, but they're still frozen.) Tink becoming a Claudia (from Interview with the Vampire) archetype, disregarding that Tinker Bell is a whole other thing here, is especially out of place with the theme.

As for the sexual subtext, at best, Peter can be an awakening for Wendy (such as in the 2003 movie, where he's, like, 13 too), but he'll never grow up. He can't share in that, or, again, he stops being Peter Pan and starts being his analogue in Alan Moore's Lost Girls. If you put it in the story, it has to be via Captain Hook, as part of the "adulthood being scary but kind of alluring on its own terms" journey Wendy goes through.

And speaking of Hook, he bungled that, too. Having Hook as an authority figure (beyond the significant double casting that tends to come up, and the 2003 movie, again, I think did well on that by making it feel less like Wendy is attracted to her father and more like her father is to some extent the archetypal adult man and Hook is kind of the shadow of that, since for once Mr. Darling and Hook were kind of opposites and not mirrors) doesn't work either because Hook is Peter Pan's plaything. Functionally speaking, Neverland is Peter Pan's domain. Hook is there to lose to Peter Pan again and again; he's frankly been driven a little insane by it (and there's some hilarious subtext reading it as an adult, as J.M. Barrie emphasizes how dangerous and intelligent this guy is and puts him in a situation where a permanent kindergartner maims him and he doesn't have much control over it).

Hook is the antagonist not because he has power or control; it's because he's a vague representation of power and control used as Peter Pan's personal Washington Generals. (Google the Harlem Globetrotters, I can't do all your homework for you.) Making your Hook figure actually in charge of anything? Again, you can fashion a story about rebellious youth from that, but it won't be the story of Peter Pan.

Bat tries to have its cake and eat it too while still trying to come off like Peter Pan. Sometimes, you have to know when to stop at an allusion. (Joke ending of this lecture: "...and that concludes why Tanz der Vampire is a much better explication of Jim's favorite themes (albeit unintentionally), thanks for coming to my TED Talk.")

But then, TWG, you tried to avoid all that and were limited in how much of it you could mitigate. Isn't that right?

[ThatWriterGuy]

Originally Posted by letsgotoofar

But then, TWG, you tried to avoid all that and were limited in how much of it you could mitigate. Isn't that right?

Yep.

Not my sandbox, not my name above the marquee sign.

As for Barrie, Disney, Wendy and Pan -- all of that source served as an initial catalyst for what Jim wanted to do (and I'm talking way back in the 80s here when Jim first started writing a treatment for a BAT musical), but those conversations about those characters and those archetypes were long gone (though acknowledged in the rear view mirror) by the time that I was asked to work on the book. The themes remained, in a broad sense, but Jim made it clear that he wasn't looking to reinvent Peter Pan.

What he wanted was a rock n roll tale of eternal youth (thematically) VS modern day domestic suburbia (albeit in a pseudo urban setting), and the inevitable power struggle that comes with the burden of every teen whereupon he comes of age and realizes that he has become his own father (okay, that last clause was mine -- it was never used and there was no interest in taking that strand any further).

Jim didn't want a jukebox musical.

He was dead set against it.

He used We Will Rock You by name ... as an example of what he DIDN'T want.

Jim got sicker (9 strokes, lost the power to compose, lost the power of speech 3 times over, lost motor function).

Producers cast the whole musical behind his back, locked him out, and changed everything.

Jim's words to me, afterwards, were "sickened, badly shaken, and shocked".

Make of it what you will.

I have the receipts.

[letsgotoofar]

Originally Posted by ThatWriterGuy

As for Barrie, Disney, Wendy and Pan -- all of that source served as an initial catalyst for what Jim wanted to do (and I'm talking way back in the 80s here when Jim first started writing a treatment for a BAT musical), but those conversations about those characters and those archetypes were long gone (though acknowledged in the rear view mirror) by the time that I was asked to work on the book. The themes remained, in a broad sense, but Jim made it clear that he wasn't looking to reinvent Peter Pan.

He clung to the common elements/references for so long, even in 2100, that I thought it important to clarify that even at its roots, the premise was flawed, because he'd already long failed to grasp the source, or at least willfully ignored it after the initial point of connection. I already understood the above to be the case and agree with you that, regardless, the lingering Pan-ish elements didn't fit. (I'm biased because we know each other, but I always thought your idea at least made sense by comparison.)

[nightinr]

Are we expecting the musical to continue after this UK tour?

[ThatWriterGuy]

[AndrewG]

My Full Review After Finally Seeing Bat Out of Hell: The Musical in Milton Keynes
(Spoiler alert!)

What I Loved:
"What Part of My Body Hurts the Most"
Holy hell, this moment was superb. Rob Fowler (as Falco I believe) did an awesome job.
It was the first time the show genuinely brought a smile to my face. The Jim Steinman magic finally was there.
It was lacking before that! I nearly teared up by the end of the song.
Honestly, I would’ve preferred the whole show to revolve around Falco.
That performance alone was worth the ticket (£40 for each seat I had, which is pretty cheap for a musical these days,
but the show is not worth more).

What I Liked:

• Most of the vocals were pretty good throughout the show.
  
• Dead Ringer had decent choreography and energy.
  
• Anything for Love worked well, especially the idea of switching between the three relationships you see
  in the show.
  It was a clever use of the song’s dynamics and lyrics. I should acknowledge that.
  It can't be easy to morph these songs into any story I guess.
  (Although frankly I think many of the remaining board members could probably do better).
  
• The reprise of Bat Out of Hell was exactly what you'd hope for; high energy. Sexy poses by the girls.
  Made me forget most of their terrible choreography so far (almost!). Especially the silly leg kicks.
  
• The visual effect of the silver confetti and lighting as shattered glass during the crash sequence in BOOH
  was simple but good. More of that kind of inventiveness, less cameraman and weird bedroom ceiling please!
  
• Also (sorry but, Sex and Drums and Rock N Roll eh?); I liked watching Raven's ass and legs in fishnets on stage.
  The actress playing her looks tiny in person, but according to online bios,
  she’s three inches taller than Zahara’s actress. Someone's exaggerating I think.

What I Hated:

• Unfortunately, almost the entire first act. The plot and choreography were atrocious.
  
• Strat and The Lost (Not called The Lost Boys due to copyright perhaps?). Who are they? Why are they hunted by Falco's henchmen? What’s Falco’s role in the world?
  Why do The Lost follow Strat? Why does he get the girl without doing much? Why do Falco and his wife randomly join the Lost at the end?
  None of it is explained. It’s just a cascade of "Don’t knows."
  
• Strat's character is imbecilic rather than a heroic rebel.
  It's hard to root for him when he comes off more like a horny high crackhead than a romantic heroic main character.
  He just wants to bang Raven and that pretty much goes ahead unhindered.
  ! I'm just saying Raven; at least I would have bought you a coffee first.
  
• There are weird and inexplicable references to Les Misérables.
  Tink almost dying in Strat's arms felt like a poor man's "A Little Fall of Rain."
  Falco infiltrating the Lost screamed "Javert goes undercover." Why? No clue.
  And oddly, there’s zero nod to Meat Loaf. No jokes, no references. Just a red handkerchief stuffed down Falco’s underwear
  to make it look like he has a bigger dick. His wife removes it and then Falco constantly puts his hands in front of his dick.
  Not funny, just uncomfortable.
  I don't want to look at Falco's dick. But I'm forced to it seems. Bring back Raven's legs or ass.
  
  They even did more with a reference to Meat Loaf in We Will Rock You. Bizarre.
  
• The unnecessary background choreography in Paradise by the Dashboard Light was pure cringe.
  It became torturous to watch, especially when they were dressed in awful underwear.
  I felt like shouting out "Come on, please don't do that."
  Jesus H Christ.
  
• The onstage cameraman. Why?
  The psychedelic visuals on screen were distracting and added nothing.
  I was worried we were going down a truly weird high crackhead psychedelic route early on,
  but at least it didn't last. For gaining close-ups: a few well-placed, embedded into the set cameras
  could achieve these without the chaos.
  
• Handheld mics? I get the rock concert vibe they were going for, but they looked clunky and got in the way of the storytelling.
  
• Strat's singing and general presence were just... ugh. What a douchebag. You don't know what you're missing, Raven.
  
• "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth" started awkwardly without a snare hit.
  Not sure if it was a technical issue or a weird directorial choice. It sounded off launching straight into that.

What Could Have Made It Better:

• Strat needs to be likeable. Give him a redeeming moment. Save Tink from suicide, show vulnerability, anything.
  Right now, he’s just a guy trying to bang Raven raw and the fact he is supposed to be ageless makes no difference.
  Give us something to root for. This leads me onto:
  
• Add a time jump between Acts 1 and 2: maybe 20 years.
  That way, you could explore a deeper love story between an ageless Strat and an older Raven.
  It would give songs like "It’s All Coming Back to Me Now" and "Objects in the Rearview Mirror" emotional weight.
  
• Focus less on youth. Steinman’s songs are full of longing, nostalgia, and reflection. Maybe it's just me. That's
  how I take them anyway.
  They’re not just horny teenage anthems.
  This musical feels more Romeo & Juliet than Peter Pan anyway.
  I agree with LetsGoTooFar: this all being about Peter Pan is just a bunch of BS
  when we really consider the lyrics in these songs.
  
• Less wokeness please: It feels like the show is overcorrecting by giving all the iconic spoken-word monologues to Raven,
  including "Love, Death & an American Guitar," which clearly came from a male character’s perspective. And one that is not 18!
  And also the most hard done by thing ("There's only one girl I will ever love") is changed to sung by a woman.
  Ba-humbug! The fact it was a woman that walked out on the guy in 2 out of 3 in the past and now he is telling a woman to shut the hell up
  and to be happy he is not going to do that but at least give her 2 out of 3 great things,
  is what made that song unique. No?
  Musicals by themselves are often regarded as somewhat gay.
  But this one seems to have been stripped of almost all masculinity which was totally not necessary.
  Wicked has more masculinity (Fiyero is done with the bitch ass bullshit going on in Oz when Elphaba opens his eyes
  and becomes the man he should be - no such rescue here)
  Truly bizarre when we consider Steinman's lyrics!

Final Verdict:
Honestly, for a long stretch of Act 1, the only words in my head were "~~~~ing irritating."
Especially if it hadn't been for Raven's legs and ass.
I was hovering around a 4/10 score, it was that bad.
I was honestly thinking I should go home and just listen to the original music and wash my memory of this mess.

For context, I’d rate We Will Rock You (the UK tour version I saw in 2022) a 5/10 - the worst mainstream musical I had seen till that first act of BOOH! -
and weirdly, the RCL cruise ship version last year I saw was better — maybe a 7/10.
But Act 2 picks up to be fair.
Especially thanks to a great What Part of My Body, AFL and the BOOH reprise,
So I’ll give this a 6/10. But I'm being too kind I think.
Maybe it's more like a 5/10 objectively.
The first Google review I saw this evening after I came home is from someone who gave it 1 star and left at the intermission.
I don’t blame her, but she did miss the best parts.

In the end, Bat Out of Hell: The Musical joins a very short list of musicals I’ve truly disliked. And that’s saying something!
Most shows I see easily score an 8 or more. All of the big West End ones are like that.
Not sure you can class Whistle Down The Wind a West End show, I only ever saw the tour when it came out. But that was
a 7 from what I can remember. Honestly, most shows that are set in London theatres and play there for years
(out of the ones I've seen at least) I've never
thought should have a rating of less than an 8.
I bet even rewatching Evita with that woke-assed bitch Rachel Zegler will still be an 8. I'll probably end up seeing it.

This could have been so much better, given the incredible Steinman music it had to work with.
What the hell were they thinking?!
Still, I don’t regret going.
It had moments of greatness.
Just... far too few of them.

Final score: 6/10.
A missed opportunity.
But one brilliant song.
It really shows that gravitas that an experienced singer can bring (such as Rob Fowler AND mostly Meat Loaf of course)
makes ALL the difference.
They should have gone down a different route I reckon.

[ThatWriterGuy]

It's hard to disagree with the above.

An excellent and thoughtful review, Andrew (even if you did focus on 'Raven's ass' a little too hard!).

Something I can help illuminate: "Why is the plot nonsensical and the first act a complete, confusing mess?"

Well, the short answer's this: They took the words right out of the script.

And don't get me wrong. It was never great. I had to fight with Jim to even attempt a proper set up for Strat (and - yeah - you hit the nail on the head above with why he doesn't work and exactly how he comes off to a cold audience). He was supposed to be the leader of the pack. He was supposed to be Elvis in Jailhouse Rock. And that was just the background. He was supposed to be so much more. But then came the memo, "less words, more songs". See, in producer-land, more songs = more bums on seats. More dollars. More pounds. More more more more. Less talky. No one comes to these things for the words anyway, right? More hits!!! HITS!!! That's pretty much what happened.

So you're left looking at 'the story' - whatever that is these days - and you can't help seeing it for what it is: a thinly veiled vehicle - no thicker than a skeleton - that only exists as a device to pin songs upon. And nothing else. It's a framework. That's pretty much it. They shot for lowest common denominator ... and that's exactly what they got.

Ah ... when you think about what it coulda-shoulda been!

[letsgotoofar]

At one point, I proposed (on this forum and in several private emails) that the only way to make sense of this shit and arrive at something somewhere between what Jim wanted and the producers mandated would be a limited series (with a finite ending) on a streamer that took elements of every script from Dream Engine and Neverland on down to Bat 2100, threw them in a blender with all the songs ever earmarked for the project (both the obvious and the obscure, sprinkled throughout the series), and had the space and time to do the world-building that made the story make sense. Shit like this is why. If all you have to do is remove one brick and the whole building falls, then it was a house of cards to begin with.

It doesn't help that a shortcoming of Jim's dating back to 1977, by his own admission (to a colleague of Joe Papp), has been that once he had the image in his head and the story/script/what-have-you as locked down to that image as he could get it, it no longer mattered to him whether the result made sense to people. He already knew how the world of the show worked, and that was all that mattered. His weak link was that the audience had to get it, too, for it to resonate... we weren't all cooked in the same stew of sophisticated entertainment (opera, Off-Broadway, et al.) crossed with rock and roll and schlocky Fifties B-movie sci-fi...

Meat Loaf worked so well as a vehicle for the songs because, shorn of the context Jim intended, the package was a simple concept: elevate mundane teenage life to operatic dimensions, the way it felt when we were young and before we'd experienced real problems, and put it in the mouth of a visual representation of the underdog everyone thinks they are. This is what would happen if we got to park by the lake with the most popular girl in school, and if we'd only said exactly what we meant to say in exactly the right way... it was a voice we wished we had, and a story we understood.

Easier sell than I Can't Believe It's Sorta Kinda (Not) Peter Pan.