Theatre review: Bat Boy

There's a lot of musicals based on books, straight plays and movies, but there's also a few with more eccentric origins. Like a story about a half-human, half-bat from the Weekly World News, a tabloid for urban legends and tall tales, and the basis for Bat Boy: The Musical. In the town of Hope Falls, West Virginia, some kids exploring a cave uncover the teenage Bat Boy (Rob Compton.) He's taken to the house of Dr Parker (Matthew White,) in the expectation that the doctor will have him put down. But his wife Meredith (Lauren Ward) and daughter Shelley (Georgina Hagen) take to Edgar, as they call him, and he's soon accepted as a member of the family, learning to speak, read and do accountancy. But Dr Parker starts to feel as if Edgar is robbing him of his family's affection, and with the town's economy on the downturn he knows he can easily turn the population against a beastly-looking scapegoat.

Theatre review: A Chorus of Disapproval

I do hope that somewhere there's a theatre called the Alan Ayckbourn Theatre that predominantly shows plays by Pinter, as a bit of balance because since getting renamed, the Harold Pinter Theatre seems to have mainly specialised in Ayckbourn. The latest is Trevor Nunn's revival of A Chorus of Disapproval, a 1980s (though in this production at least, the setting is largely cosmetic) trip to a small English town and its troubled amateur operatics company. We follow their production of The Beggar's Opera from early rehearsals to public performance, through the eyes of newcomer Guy (Nigel Harman,) a shy widower. Over the three months' worth of rehearsals, Guy goes from socially awkward nonentity to star of the show, resident stud and the man everyone wants to be friends with, all the way out the other end to least popular man in the company - largely by accident, and to his great confusion.