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[0:13] Jess McKenna: Hello, I'm Jess McKenna.

[0:15] Andrew DeWolf: And I'm Andrew DeWolf.

[0:18] Brianna Jones: And I'm Brianna Jones, and I'm back, bitches.

[0:22] Jess McKenna: Technically, you were already back a week.

[0:24] Jess McKenna: But welcome to Musicals with Cheese, a podcast where I try to convince Andrew and Bree to like musical theater.

[0:28] Jess McKenna: We've got our favorite guest, our first guest, and the best guest.

[0:32] Jess McKenna: And you guys will know him as Brent Black, but today he's Brent Boy the Musical.

[0:38] Brent Black: Hello!

[0:40] Brent Black: Hello for the paint.

[0:43] Jess McKenna: Thank you.

[0:43] Brent Black: I've missed being on the show for the Patreon viewers.

[0:46] Brent Black: I intentionally made it a spooky kind of look with like a red light.

[0:51] Jess McKenna: I actually really like it.

[0:52] Jess McKenna: You look really good in this.

[0:55] Brent Black: I can just keep the bad boy.

[0:57] Brent Black: And I'm gonna hold myself, bad boy.

[0:59] Brent Black: Touch myself, bad boy.

[1:01] Brent Black: Help myself through the night.

[1:02] Jess McKenna: If nobody knows those lyrics, you're already confused and grossed out.

[1:06] Jess McKenna: Um anyway, bye forever.

[1:08] Brianna Jones: They're whims, they're whims.

[1:09] Jess McKenna: Not as confused and grossed out as they would be if they saw Bat Boy the Musical.

[1:13] Andrew DeWolf: That's true.

[1:15] Jess McKenna: I will say, Bat Boy the Musical was a little bit more intense than I expected.

[1:19] Jess McKenna: TBH.

[1:21] Brianna Jones: Oh my god, Jess is going through a dark phase.

[1:24] Jess McKenna: I am.

[1:25] Jess McKenna: Had you never seen it, Jess?

[1:26] Jess McKenna: Um, I had listened to the album a ton, um, but I had never properly seen it.

[1:31] Jess McKenna: Like I've never watched the full thing.

[1:33] Jess McKenna: Um, in case you guys haven't picked up on it because I forgot our structure.

[1:36] Jess McKenna: This week we are talking about Bat Boy the Musical.

[1:40] Jess McKenna: Cue the Music Bree.

[1:42] Brent Black: I know you hate me, but if you could only see me the way I see all of you.

[1:48] Brent Black: Look at all your faces.

[1:51] Brent Black: Children, husbands, wives.

[1:54] Brent Black: God, you're all so beautiful.

[1:57] Brent Black: I envy you your life.

[2:02] Brent Black: Going to work, building your schools, throwing a football or swimming in pools, out in the sun, living by rules.

[2:11] Brent Black: I can learn how if you teach me the tools.

[2:16] Brent Black: I know I'm strange.

[2:20] Brent Black: So help me change.

[2:24] Brent Black: Please.

[2:27] Jess McKenna: Bat Boy the Musical is a musical with music and lyrics by Lawrence O'Keefe and a book by Keith Farley and Brian Fleming.

[2:34] Jess McKenna: Um, it is based on the Bat Boy stories in like those old like newspaper magazines.

[2:40] Jess McKenna: I forget what they were called, but they were like all over the place in like the tabloids.

[2:44] Jess McKenna: Yeah, those like weird tabloid things like the world's tallest man marries the world's smallest girl.

[2:49] Jess McKenna: And it just has some bullshit in it.

[2:51] Jess McKenna: It's like Ripley's Believe It or Not stuff.

[2:53] Jess McKenna: But it opened on off Broadway at Union Square Theater on March 21st, 2001, and closed on December 2nd, 2001.

[3:00] Jess McKenna: Um, it's based in the Weekly World News.

[3:02] Jess McKenna: Bat Boy the Musical is a musical comedy horror show about a half-boy, half-bat creature who is discovered in a cave near Hope Falls, West Virginia.

[3:10] Jess McKenna: For lack of a better solution, the local sheriff brings Bat Boy to the home of the town veterinarian Dr. Parker, where he is eventually accepted as a member of the family and taught to act like a normal boy by the veterinarian's wife Meredith and teenage daughter Shelly.

[3:24] Jess McKenna: And Brent, I know this has been a favorite of yours for a long while.

[3:28] Brent Black: Yes, yes.

[3:29] Brent Black: Um, so in the year uh 2007.

[3:34] Brent Black: Wow, it's getting so long ago that I need to be like, the year was 20 and oh seven.

[3:40] Brent Black: Um, I was writing uh a musical in grad school with uh my buddy Rob Broadhurst, and it was like a Faustian tale about a boy who wants friends and the devil wants his soul.

[3:52] Brent Black: But we were trying to watch shows that felt like they also had kind of a spooky feel.

[3:58] Brent Black: Right.

[3:59] Brent Black: Um, and we got access to the Toft Library, which is this random weird library at Lincoln Center where they have pro-shot videos of like every musical that made any kind of significant splash over the last 30 years.

[4:12] Brent Black: You can't bring a phone, you can't bring anything but pencil and paper, and you watch it on a tiny tube TV.

[4:18] Brent Black: But ever since I watched it, despite my misgivings and despite my problems with it, it is in fact one of my favorite shows.

[4:25] Brent Black: And unlike my sometimes seriously vicious and uh cold, unfeeling takedowns of certain musicals on this show, I think this one's a good example of how if the story of a show really grips me and the music's halfway good, I'm just way less critical of the small details.

[4:44] Jess McKenna: I think that's fair.

[4:45] Jess McKenna: Um, this composer, uh Lawrence O'Keefe, we'd later go on to do Legally Blonde and Heathers and stuff like that.

[4:53] Jess McKenna: And I wish I had seen this before I had seen all that.

[4:56] Jess McKenna: Um, because I feel like that captures the same tone with like five percent more heart.

[5:01] Jess McKenna: And I feel like I miss a little bit of heart in this show.

[5:04] Brent Black: Yeah.

[5:05] Brianna Jones: Wait, in this one?

[5:06] Brent Black: Yeah.

[5:07] Brent Black: I feel like Bat Boy doesn't quite have as much heart as those other people.

[5:11] Jess McKenna: Oh, that's fascinating.

[5:12] Brianna Jones: Oh, we're gonna get into it.

[5:14] Jess McKenna: Yes.

[5:15] Jess McKenna: But Andrew, this was your first time diving in.

[5:17] Andrew DeWolf: Because I had listened to the cast recording and had an awareness, but I hadn't properly seen it beginning to end.

[5:22] Andrew DeWolf: What was your thoughts on this?

[5:23] Andrew DeWolf: You know, honestly, I had no idea where they were going at any given time.

[5:28] Andrew DeWolf: You know, it was like you're at 20 minutes in, and I'm like, all right.

[5:31] Andrew DeWolf: So there's like a bat boy in the cave, and he's gonna he's like eats people, but like this family wants to adopt him.

[5:37] Andrew DeWolf: So it's gonna be like Little Shop, right? Like they're gonna have to feed him human.

[5:40] Andrew DeWolf: Well, wait, no, not at all.

[5:41] Andrew DeWolf: They teach him how to speak English.

[5:42] Andrew DeWolf: All right, oh, he wants to date the sister now.

[5:44] Andrew DeWolf: Okay, uh, he wants to be a Jesus man.

[5:48] Andrew DeWolf: Uh oh, he's no, he's going back to the cave.

[5:50] Andrew DeWolf: All right.

[5:51] Andrew DeWolf: And it's like, what is happening?

[5:53] Andrew DeWolf: It is a wild ride.

[5:54] Andrew DeWolf: Um but honestly, it's very interesting, and I thought it was pretty funny for the most part.

[5:59] Andrew DeWolf: They kind of had pretty good humor.

[6:01] Andrew DeWolf: Um, I enjoyed it.

[6:02] Jess McKenna: Yes.

[6:03] Jess McKenna: Um, before we go further, um, we do have to bring up that this show tackles some topics that are much more serious, and it's a time capsule of the early aughts.

[6:13] Jess McKenna: Um, and some things that we probably wouldn't joke about or joked about here, that doesn't make it bad.

[6:17] Jess McKenna: It's just a thing to bring up.

[6:18] Jess McKenna: There's talks of like incest and rape and all that stuff, and it's played so weird and darkly lighthearted in the same way of something like Heathers, that it's no way that you're kinda gonna take it seriously.

[6:32] Jess McKenna: But we are gonna bring that up, and if that's gonna make you uncomfortable, go ahead with caution.

[6:35] Jess McKenna: All right, let's keep going.

[6:37] Jess McKenna: So, Brent, you have have you ever seen this live, like properly live?

[6:41] Brent Black: No, no, but at this point I have seen two different uh recordings of of two different like the recording of the original cast and also uh also a high school, which I'm sorry, Jess, you sent all these zip files for me.

[6:56] Brent Black: Not that we would ever watch a bootleg, um, but these zip files, and I was like, I wonder if there's one on YouTube.

[7:03] Brent Black: So you sent me those in vain, but I did watch a high school that was one of these like probably very affluent, very white school districts where they have really good funding, because it was like good, y'all.

[7:15] Brent Black: It was surprisingly good.

[7:17] Brent Black: And I'll get into differences in how they staged various things as we go along, but um what was the question?

[7:23] Jess McKenna: You answered it.

[7:24] Jess McKenna: He got there.

[7:26] Jess McKenna: Have you ever seen it live?

[7:27] Brent Black: No.

[7:30] Jess McKenna: Which is fair, which is fair.

[7:32] Jess McKenna: Um I'm actually gonna turn to Andrew real quick.

[7:35] Jess McKenna: If you could tell us in as short as possible, what the plot is of Bat Boy.

[7:41] Andrew DeWolf: Sure.

[7:41] Andrew DeWolf: Um, I mean, the broad strokes of it is there is a bat boy in a in a cave, and it's exactly what you think of when you think of Bat Boy.

[7:50] Andrew DeWolf: It's like a Nosferatu type, like pointy ears and vampire teeth and a bald head.

[7:56] Andrew DeWolf: It's a bat boy.

[7:57] Andrew DeWolf: So great.

[7:59] Andrew DeWolf: There's some people uh what spelunking or cave exploring, I don't really know.

[8:04] Andrew DeWolf: Um they're um in the cave, and the bat boy attacks one of them, and then that's the that's the start of everything, because the bat boy gets captured, and they bring them to the veterinarian's house to uh to put them down, but there's the mother and daughter duo, and they're like, no, we're not gonna do that.

[8:23] Andrew DeWolf: So they don't they don't kill the bat boy, even though the town really wants them to.

[8:27] Andrew DeWolf: Um then they teach the bat boy to speak English, um, even though the veterinarian father is really against this and really wants to just kill the bat boy pretty badly.

[8:40] Andrew DeWolf: At a certain point, the bat boy wants to join society, and the veterinarians like the veterinarian himself, who I believe his name Mr. Parker.

[8:49] Andrew DeWolf: Yes, Dr. Doctor Parker.

[8:50] Andrew DeWolf: Don't don't take away his doctorate.

[8:53] Andrew DeWolf: Even though it is a veterinarian degree, Dr. Doctor Parker.

[8:56] Andrew DeWolf: Veterinarian viewers gonna be like, I can't believe you said that.

[9:01] Andrew DeWolf: All my I was in there for twelve years learning about all the various digestive systems of lots of animals.

[9:07] Andrew DeWolf: Anyway.

[9:08] Andrew DeWolf: I was a fan of you guys until today.

[9:11] Jess McKenna: True.

[9:13] Andrew DeWolf: No, but uh but um Doctor Parker uh doesn't want him to join society, so he decides that the best thing to do is to just start murdering people.

[9:25] Andrew DeWolf: So he he goes and he kills the person that Bat Boy originally attacked and blames it on him.

[9:30] Andrew DeWolf: Um while he's doing this though, Bat Boy, of course, attends a uh uh a church revival.

[9:37] Andrew DeWolf: I think that's what it is, and and he gets he he is now loved by the whole town for about five minutes until the Doctor Parker shows up and is like, Oh no, Bat Boy is uh evil he may he kills them even though he doesn't want to.

[9:51] Andrew DeWolf: I don't even know what it he says he gave them an infection or something.

[9:56] Jess McKenna: Yeah.

[9:57] Andrew DeWolf: Uh and then he uh Bat Boy attacks someone else and and Doctor Parker kills them too, and and it just goes on like that for a little while.

[9:57] Andrew DeWolf: Um and then Bat Boy runs away and lives in the woods, and the sister character or the daughter not sister that we know of.

[10:16] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, not you we don't know that yet.

[10:18] Andrew DeWolf: The daughter shows up and is like, I'm in love with you.

[10:23] Andrew DeWolf: Um like you know, let's do it, and they do it, I think.

[10:28] Andrew DeWolf: After Pan tells them, yeah, yeah, y'all should fuck.

[10:31] Jess McKenna: Yeah, I don't think that really happened, but I honestly I could be wrong.

[10:34] Andrew DeWolf: That might have actually been the abstract spirit of horny wood nymphs, some kind of, you know, horny demigods out there in the forest.

[10:45] Andrew DeWolf: But Bat Boy desperately needs to uh drink your blood to survive.

[10:50] Andrew DeWolf: So he's like, oh, get away from me, because I am gonna eat you.

[10:55] Andrew DeWolf: And she's like, no, you can eat me, it's fine.

[10:58] Andrew DeWolf: Um, but then ever the whole town shows up before that happens, and Dr. Parker decides right now is a really good time to explain that.

[11:06] Andrew DeWolf: Oh lord, do I even get into this?

[11:08] Andrew DeWolf: That the people that were raising him were his actual parents because of bestiality.

[11:13] Andrew DeWolf: And so now he's spoilers, by the way, uh, obviously.

[11:17] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[11:18] Andrew DeWolf: Um, and the the therefore incest, and then the musical kind of ends.

[11:24] Jess McKenna: Yeah.

[11:24] Jess McKenna: Exposition dump twist explanation and good lord.

[11:28] Jess McKenna: This is a really difficult one to explain, to be honest.

[11:32] Jess McKenna: Every five seconds there's like a big twist that just goes somewhere else.

[11:35] Brianna Jones: Yeah, like especially if you've only watched it once, you know.

[11:38] Brianna Jones: Like it really, you said it well.

[11:40] Brianna Jones: It is a ride, and you don't know where it's going.

[11:43] Jess McKenna: But this is one of those stories where I feel like not enough breadcrumbs were left for you to follow the twist, and where it felt almost like a lie.

[11:51] Brent Black: A lie to be like, hey, we got you.

[11:54] Jess McKenna: I think that's how you know it's a good twist.

[11:56] Brent Black: Well, okay, unless unless you feel like and again, I think a lot of this has to do with acting.

[12:01] Jess McKenna: Yes.

[12:01] Brent Black: Because, you know, it's like watching The Matrix, where a second watch through, you're like, oh shit.

[12:07] Brent Black: Technically, that reaction could go both ways.

[12:10] Brent Black: He was technically reacting to a thing we didn't know that he knew.

[12:14] Jess McKenna: But if this show is acted in a way that doesn't really consider the twist coming, it can feel more like a lie.

[12:22] Brent Black: And now I wish I'd seen the version y'all had seen, because to me, I feel like it set it it it sets it up just well enough where you're like, oh, it was all there all along.

[12:32] Brent Black: It was so obvious, um, but it isn't your first time through, you know?

[12:37] Jess McKenna: Which might be, as you said, the opportunity for a good twist.

[12:40] Brent Black: But when I watched it, I was like, uh that feels like a lot of moments have now changed for the negative that happened before this.

[12:47] Jess McKenna: Um, but it also could have a lot to do with performance in the way it is acted, as you said.

[12:52] Jess McKenna: There's a lot of different facets and balls in the air going here, going on here.

[12:55] Jess McKenna: Um now, Brent, what do you feel drives you to this musical?

[12:59] Brent Black: What do you think sets it above a lot of other parody musicals?

[13:01] Brent Black: Say Andrew made a comparison to Star Kid, but I think this is way better than most of their stuff.

[13:06] Brent Black: I gotta say, I don't think of this, and keeping in mind, you know, parody, there's there are a few things where I can say, I think I'm an expert on this topic, but um I don't think of this as a parody because I don't think that many people were familiar with Bat Boy, aside from maybe having seen the front page of the National Inquirer, the Weekly World News, like, as opposed to I'm working on a Star Trek musical.

[13:31] Brent Black: There are 700 episodes of Star Trek.

[13:34] Brent Black: There was like one or two stories in the tabloids about this bat boy.

[13:37] Brent Black: So from from my perspective, it's a melodramatic, like it's a melodrama or a tragic comedy.

[13:45] Brent Black: Um, but with that said, I think what it does really well is it seems like when they wrote it, it was probably a queer allegory, because the Christian themes run right through it, and who doesn't let Edgar be who he is?

[13:59] Brent Black: All these Christians.

[14:01] Brent Black: Well, what else did Christians, particularly at the turn of the century not let young people do?

[14:08] Brent Black: Be anything other than straight?

[14:10] Brent Black: Um and and cisgender.

[14:13] Brent Black: So now that being said, I think it also, you know, and this is speaking from the fact that I was raised in the church, like when you're raised in the church and you believe it, you sort of hate yourself for the things that tempt you, for the ways in which you quote, fall short of the glory of God.

[14:42] Brent Black: And I feel like the character of Bat Boy exemplifies that. And then the end of the show is, you know, hold your bat boy, or what is it? It's the idea is like embrace your inner bat boy, whether the lyrics are that or not. And I think it is an allegory for the things that aren't okay in society that when you really look at them aren't harmful, they just need to be considered and accepted. But the person who isn't acceptable in society ends up hating themselves so much because society doesn't accept them or understand them. So, like, if it's a parody of if it started as a parody of the weekly world news, like I see how they got to where they are, but it's funny. I think this has more heart than Heather's. I think that it I have literally teared up watching moments from this show, even though it's silly, even though the ending is a lot.

Um, so that's just me. But again, I feel like it hit me different at a different time. And we've seen different combinations of performances. So I'm really curious how it hit based on the performance you've seen. Now, Andrew, did you feel emotionally connected to this musical? Um, or I guess I'm back to Brent again. Would you consider Lil's app of Horrors apparently? Sorry. I had a I had a question I wanted to ask. Would you consider Little Shop of Horrors a parody? Because I feel like that's its most closest relation on the video.

[16:06] Brent Black: I'm gonna make up a term called Parody Plus. Um, you know, the office musical parody that ran and I guess is running again on Broadway. Um it's not parody plus. If you don't know the office pretty well, there's gonna be a lot of stuff that you just don't get, and it doesn't find a way to reach out to someone who's never seen The Office and pull them in with a good story. Um the same goes where whereas something like Puffs, which isn't the musical, but it is a parody of Harry Potter, does have some heart toward the end, and so it's parody plus. And Little Shop is the ultimate parody plus because I don't think that the movie Little Shop of Horrors was all that well known. Like made in the day, random Roger Corman B movie.

I think what the audiences got into at Little Shop was it was a parody of the time. It's got so much Shalala 1960s kind of feel and exemplifies the B movie kind of vibe. Um, but at the same time, whereas the movie didn't have that much heart and failed, I think at its attempt, sorry, the original film failed at its attempt to really make you feel something deeply. I think that especially the live show Little Shop of Horrors, more than the theatrical cut of the movie, but I think it does have some heart, and I think you do get caught up in like, wow, I kind of care about these characters. So in that way they are similar, but that being said, I wouldn't call them pure parody either one, of their source material.

[17:42] Andrew DeWolf: I mean, yeah, that's a fair explanation of what parody means to you and where it kind of was like confusing to me. Um, but Andrew, did you feel any heart and connection there? Were you ever emotionally touched by the story of the bat boy and Edgar?

[17:56] Andrew DeWolf: Um, I thought it had a lot of heart, actually. I actually kind of agree with Brent here. I didn't really. I didn't think about it on the same level that he has, although I think he has had a lot more time to think about this show than I have. Um, but um yeah, I think that there was a lot to say um about like the Edgar character and what they were trying to do with it. Um, I don't know if I agree with you that like you were saying legally blonde and Heathers had more. Heathers I'm thinking more than legally blonde. I definitely don't see legally blonde having more heart than this show. It feels like this was like a passion show, if anything, whereas Legally Blonde kind of I'm not saying it was bad, but it was definitely felt more like they were just trying to adapt something. I mean I feel more heart from the legally blonde musical than I did from the movie, to be honest, and I feel like a lot of that comes from the musical side of that.

[18:49] Brent Black: Sure. You kind of have to. Um, and I feel like they're good at this, but I feel like everything outside of Edgar is really so over the top in a way that kind of takes you out of the emotional connection you have to Edgar. Well, I think they were trying to be funny for the most part, and I there was one gag in particular that I really liked, which was um everyone who dies in the show is all from the same family. Yes. And on the last person that dies is killed by their own mother, which I thought was really funny. Uh I mean, that's horrifying in theory. Like if you just read that in a plot synopsis, that's horrible. Yeah, and it's a good idea. But it's obviously played for laughs, though, and these characters don't have any character whatsoever.

[19:29] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. I think this show can be done incorrectly, even though I don't know the author's intent. But having seen the seminal production, you assume like the first big big production sort of took that into account, and it's like, I think it needs a tiny bit of camp, a lot of what I would call melodrama, where it is heightened, it is a little more dramatic, it is a little more theatrical. But the great thing about melodrama as a genre is you can you can flip you can flip seamlessly from melodrama into actual drama because the audience has been if it's funny melodrama, the audience has been tenderized, pulverized with laughs, and they're vulnerable. So when you twist the knife, I know I'm mixing metaphors like a motherfucker, but like when when you suddenly make it painful and make them feel things, again, it takes very specific direction in acting.

In a way, it can it can be more emotional than like your Frank Wildhorn shows where it's like, yeah, there's drama, but there's also seven love ballads. Jesus. I'm gonna go take a dump. Tell me when it's over. God.

[20:34] Andrew DeWolf: Okay. So let's talk about Kevin Murphy, who did later collaborate with Lawrence O'Keefe on these. And I know that Kevin Murphy was the spearhead behind another one of your favorite musicals, Brent, um, Reefer Madness, the musical. And they would later come together to write the Heathers and all that other stuff. How does this compare to that? And where do you see the big differences between those? Because I feel like they're kind of part and parcel together.

[20:56] Brent Black: I think that Reefer Madness is simultaneously more of a parody, less of a parody plus. It does have a little bit of heart, but it's more laughs throughout. And depending on which version you watch, I feel like Bat Boy is, I think, a successful and moving story about really like somebody who's somebody who's gay with conservative Christian parents. I mean, in my mind, right? Or fill in the blank with thing that conservative Christian parents wouldn't want you to be. Whereas the other show, uh Reefer Madness, it to the extent that it's actually trying to be like drugs are cool, what's wrong with you? People that are anti-drug, like it's it's a little more abrasive, even though obviously I agree.

Um so yeah, I think Reefer Madness is fun, but I just think it's so much more silly, madcap, and off the wall, and it doesn't actually have as much anchoring, in my opinion, in real emotion, and it doesn't, I don't think have that much to say when it comes to um or I guess what I really am saying is it doesn't hit hard. And I don't think that the script of Reefer Madness has the built-in blueprint to emotionally hit you, whereas Batboy, if done well, really can.

[22:18] Andrew DeWolf: Let's talk about some of the characters really quick outside of Edgar, because Edgar is obviously the most fully fleshed character in here where everyone else kind of they have their arcs and they're very well used in their arcs, but um they're they're goofy. They're they're archetypes, intentionally so. Um, like Meredith is probably like the second most developed character outside of Edgar, I'd say.

[22:39] Brent Black: Yeah. Yeah. I had some questions about her character a little bit.

[22:44] Andrew DeWolf: All right. Um, like from a from the point of view of she knows that it's her son, right? Am I am I thinking about the right character?

[22:54] Brent Black: Yes, yes, you are, and I'm agreeing with you. But I like I can tell what you're gonna say, and I'm already agreeing. It doesn't make very much sense the way she acts about him.

[23:02] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. Um she acts as though she has no idea that it's her son. And I I'm I mean, maybe it's on purpose, but you would think that that would be like the first thing that would come up, at least in her mind, and then of course between her and her husband about this. Cause I rewatched those scenes after finishing it because I really was like, all right, I want to see if they set this up in ways I didn't see. And when it's just her and her husband and like Edgar in there, they don't act like oh no, our big secrets come back. It's like, what are we gonna do about this fucking bat boy?

[23:34] Brent Black: Yeah. Whereas I can't I can say that the the husband character, his reaction could still make sense even with him knowing. It almost feels like he knew, but she didn't. Um, but then at the end she comes in and she's like, No, no, I knew.

[23:48] Andrew DeWolf: Okay. So I Yeah, I think that like, and I mean, I was just listening to the early part of the show, just kind of getting my head in the game here. And I think when you look at a song like Home for You, which is the one where Edgar's in a cage, he isn't really responding to anything, and she sings to him, you know, we'll make a home for you. The lyrics all cut both ways.

[24:11] Brent Black: Yes. So many lyrics in there are like, um basically the that's when I get convinced uh that they did that they did work to allow you the the rewatch value, you know, the replay value. Um, but it is a little weird, and this is gonna go to one of my points later, which is this is one of those shows that starts more clunky, both in terms of craft and I think just the consideration of questions like this, which I guess are the same thing, and improves as it goes along. But yeah, like the early songs in the show, in many cases, which again I'll talk about, don't actually match the tone or the information of the rest of the show, almost like written by a different team. And I mean, you write shows for five, ten years sometimes, so like you can be a different person when you write some songs as you are later.

But yeah, I both criticize some choices about Meredith in the early show, but also I think if acted well, the lyrics, um, particularly starting with Home for You and Forward from There do give a good blueprint uh and set up the twist. Um but you're right. The fact that she and Dr. Parker don't kind of like make eye contact and go, is this is this our weird messed up kid? Like, you know, you would think that happened off stage or something. That is a little bit deceptive in a way that's hard to buy.

[25:37] Brent Black: But I buy it because twists in musicals, oh, it turns out I'm your parent. I don't know. It's it's a trope that I think is effective. It's such a goofy twist that I kind of don't care, but at the same time, it is definitely there and doesn't it it does not make very much sense that like she doesn't like you would expect in like a movie like this there would be that scene where they're like hushed behind a corner or something like I thought you I thought you took him to the cave and killed him or whatever, you know. And an easy way to fix this is just to pick Shelly in that scene with them.

[26:09] Andrew DeWolf: Oh just where they're gonna be.

[26:11] Brent Black: I get it. So they so they can't so they can't uh be fully honest. But like, yeah, the dance with me darling would have to be cut or reworked because that would be weird with Shelly in the room. He's basically saying we haven't banged in a long time. Maybe this song we used to dance to will seduce you anyway. Anyway, hi, Shelly.

[26:32] Andrew DeWolf: And I agree with you, and that raises another question of Brent, who is the main character of the story.

[26:37] Brent Black: Oh, that's a very good question. I think um I think it's Edgar, though I think that it's the kind of show where the protagonist doesn't really come to the fore as the version of himself we're gonna know for a shockingly long amount of time. But like I don't think it's Meredith. It is an ensemble piece. Um and I I think the point of your question is that it's hard to know.

[27:02] Andrew DeWolf: Yes.

[27:03] Brent Black: But I think that the character that has the biggest arc changes the most, learns something, uh in kind of a Shakespearean or Greek tragedy way is definitely Edgar. Does he even have a proper I mean he I want song like in the first half of Act One?

[27:17] Andrew DeWolf: Um I I think when he to be fair, this is like all the way at the end of Act One. When he prays to God and asks God to take his fangs away, uh it's not a positive like hunchback out there kind of I want song, but it really tells you and then he sings Let Me Walk Among You at the beginning of Act Two. It's just like he's he's um because he started out mute essentially and only learns to speak and and you know fully actualize his personality, like toward the second, I think in the second half of act one, then him figuring out what he wants takes longer. Like when he says, um, I never knew a word such as rage, when he's saying realizing that before he knew words, he didn't have thoughts the same as he does now.

And now he knows these he's been infected and changed by these ideas and words. And so it takes him a while. But yeah, to me, the prayer in the Act One Closer and the song Let Me Walk Among You both act as dramatizing his wants, even though unlike most shows, they are way later. Because usually the I want is like song two or three.

[28:27] Brent Black: Can I throw a directorial pitch at you and see if you like it, Brent?

[28:31] Brent Black: Sure. Early on in the show, like his first night there, where you know how he kind of mumbles songs at first and he just kind of hums the melodies back at people. What if we just had him do that? But to the melody of Let Me Walk Among You, so we kind of like give him an I want song moment without us even knowing that was what it was.

[28:49] Brent Black: To me, I think that that is what I would call a hat on a hat. Because the function of what and the thing is, like if it were done and I caught it, I'd be like, oh, that's a very considered choice. But I don't think he knows enough to know what he wants. I think he's a creature of sheer instinct at that point.

[29:08] Brent Black: But when he does the like making fun of or mimicking what Shelly and asshole boyfriend are doing, it's like pure instinct, it's pure instinctual noises.

[29:23] Brent Black: And then when he starts singing the melody of what Meredith sung in the song "Home for You," to me, if he sang anything else, it wouldn't tell the same story, but that's a great storytelling song because he sings back to her the melody she sang to him.

[29:39] Brent Black: So it's like when an animal learns to trust you, right, and reflects what you want and your affection for them. So it's like if he hummed or otherwise expressed that melody in a way that was organic, maybe in the dialogue or something, that would be a cute, interesting addition. But I think that that would only be for like the way that Stephen Sondheim and Howard Ashman hide like little internal rhymes you don't realize are there until the 50th listen, you know? That's how that idea strikes me.

[30:11] Brent Black: But that's even the kind of stuff that I'm looking for when I say this pitch. It's not like a complete stop the show thing, it's just that small thing that happens.

[30:20] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[30:20] Andrew DeWolf: Okay, I want to ask Brent something about other productions of this. The one we saw, Bat Boy has a British accent when he can talk. Is that always the case?

[30:29] Brent Black: Yes, and if you'll notice, this is actually one thing that's not perfectly dramatized. This is why I sometimes say, don't have really really important information in a lyric because it flies past you on a first listen. But they've been watching BBC. In that big long montage, "I'll show you a thing or two," they've set him down in front of the BBC. And then when they do their whole, like when they're talking about stuff, "Ah, that butler should be shot. I'm feeling out of sandwiches." Like they're kind of playing like they're all British, but that's how he's learning English. So it makes no sense, but also there's something I think more meek about him, more unassuming about him. And interestingly, in the I think the you know, seminal West End or London version of the show, he spoke with an American accent.

And in my opinion, that did not work anywhere near as well. Obviously, over there, they don't interpret a poor little British kind of thing, you know, they don't interpret it the same. But like he could have had whatever their equivalent is to French accent. Something.

[31:39] Brent Black: French accent, oh my god. Or like even like a southern thing. Like we've been watching country music videos. Something that makes that sets him apart that makes him a little bit naive and a little bit cuter, because he's not an attractive looking character. I think it works really well in America because we have this interpretation of British accents of like intelligent, civilized, and intelligent. Right. So it's a exposition. Yeah, it's like, oh, the bat boy's actually more intelligent than the people around him. Right. But it also has the effect of making it feel a tiny bit more Shakespearean, a little bit more heightened, a little bit more of a melodramatic, large character who it would be silly if he was really like that. But in the context, you ideally kind of buy it, and it kind of rounds his character out really nicely, I think.

[32:31] Brent Black: It was it's five minutes, and then it'd be like, uh, all right, we need this as painful. As far as if it's just like Western American, it's like the opposite of what you would get over here, because uh in Britain American accents are like, oh, you're dumb.

[32:49] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[32:50] Andrew DeWolf: I mean, yeah. You're you're you're every movie we watch, but also you don't understand geography.

[32:56] Brent Black: Um and your healthcare system sucks. Yeah, it is a good question. I wonder if any English listeners would have an equivalent, because this kind of thing is so difficult. It's not a it's not a it's not a science. There's no science to it. It's trial and error.

[33:14] Brent Black: Kind of like their equivalent would just be another British accent because maybe like maybe it's like man Manchester, Hampshire, Scottish, Irish um, yeah, like um uh wouldn't that be interesting?

[33:29] Brent Black: Oh, I like your blood. I want to marry my sister. No, come on, Lennon, don't learn my sister. My mom was a woman, my dad was a pair of bats.

[33:43] Andrew DeWolf: Oh no.

[33:46] Jess McKenna: Well now that ending though. Can we talk about the ending just like a little bit?

[33:52] Brent Black: Let's go.

[33:53] Jess McKenna: Okay. What the hell were they thinking?

[33:58] Brent Black: They were thinking I bet they won't see this twist coming. I think it's such an unimportant like twist, too. I feel like I don't even think you had to explain where the bat boy came from, to be honest. I think you just had to say, like, the mother, well, Meredith wants uh him alive, and Mr. Parker or Dr. Parker wants him uh wants him dead, and that would be enough. There is a strangely incestuous kind of feeling between the mother and um Edgar because Dr. Parker gets so jealous when she's just like going to protect Edgar and not him.

[34:32] Andrew DeWolf: There True. It is a vibe, I'm getting where everybody's gonna be.

[34:37] Brent Black: That's interesting because it's such a Edgar. It's such a trope Edgar. It's such a like uh it's such a common thing, and maybe this is just because like I don't know, I'm a little older than y'all. I've seen so many of my friends have kids that uh in heterosexual relationships, uh, or in general, who the partner in a relationship that births the child has a certain connection, and the other person, stereotypically the husband, can feel shut out, can feel like he's not being paid attention to.

[35:09] Brent Black: So, I mean, again, uh acting is such a huge part of this, but I I think that you could play it as incestuous, or it can just be she's much more obsessed with her child than her husband, who she's hated all these years, and he's jealous because this other thing is taking all her attention away.

[35:25] Andrew DeWolf: I was gonna say that I think the jealousy between father and child can exist as well. Um but she's his wife, I think is the is the thing. So in a way, there's another thing pulling her away from him, and it's the reason she hasn't been a warm, affectionate wife to him. That's how I interpret it, is that now this thing that they got out of their lives is back, and it's taking his resources and hurting him in a way.

[35:58] Jess McKenna: Did we explain how the the ending happened though? I feel like we never did.

[36:01] Andrew DeWolf: Go for it, Andrew. Wish you the best of luck.

[36:04] Andrew DeWolf: Um a long, long time ago, uh Dr. Parker and Meredith worked together and they were creating um pheromones to make cows uh have sex. Um but it didn't work. So Dr. Parker was like, Well, what if I made it super strong? Um, and he did, and then I guess he decided the right thing to do to test it was put it all over Meredith. I don't know why. I don't know how this happened. That that I was that explained? Either way. I think it was. This is the part I I've listened to the album so much more, but this is the part of the show that is wild. I feel like it was an accidental spill, to be honest.

[36:44] Jess McKenna: Okay.

[36:44] Andrew DeWolf: If that's the vibe I got. And he he went primal and um, you know, did the bad stuff. Um, and then she ran home, and bats chase after her, and then also uh did some bad stuff. Um, and then she had two children. One uh her one Shelly, the the daughter, and one Edgar, the bad boy.

[37:05] Jess McKenna: So does that mean Shelly is half bad too?

[37:07] Andrew DeWolf: No.

[37:08] Andrew DeWolf: Well, now are are they are they fraternal twins?

[37:11] Brent Black: Maybe I forgot that part.

[37:12] Andrew DeWolf: No, because they're two different time. It's two different fathers.

[37:15] Brent Black: Okay, yeah. I'm just making sure. Yeah, they she ended up having two children, but one one with a yeah, different, different parentage. It's weird though, because it's like a it's like they set it up as an amalgam, right? Like the father had sex with her, it was not consensual, but then a bunch of bats did some things, and so in a way it's sort of suggesting human and bat DNA spliced together, as is a common occurrence we all know, happens all the time. That's how uh mostly to people in zoos.

[37:42] Jess McKenna: I was wondering.

[37:48] Brent Black: Um I am the bad boy. I just I don't I don't understand why they did this. I feel like there was other ways you could have done this somehow. Maybe even just have it where like the bat boy just is, like she gave birth and it's a bat somehow, and we it's not really explained.

[38:05] Andrew DeWolf: Andrew, you know what this comes to me as? It comes to me as like two edgelord people like just chatting with each other. You know, it'd be real fucked up. No one would see a comment. Man, okay, you think we could get away with this? It's the same mindset I think that Dear Evan Hansen created. Like, dude, do you think we could actually get away with this?

[38:21] Brent Black: It does feel like a show that they started as a gag and then it grew into a show with more heart. Um, but I wonder if the explanation and the twist was one of the earlier things they wrote, um, bookend style. Because I think it's wise to write your opener and your last 10 minutes first. So you know where you're headed, you know where you started. But um when I watched the video of the original cast, I really thought this was so extra. Like, not only was the twist like the explanation, like, oh, okay, that's a choice, but the amount of time it took for them to recount the whole flashback when the show is like ramping up, act two's gone a little bit long, and now we're doing this whole flashback, could have been a little faster.

[39:07] Brent Black: But interestingly, I think that certain companies have found out how to do it better. The high school one I saw had dual projectors with like old sepia tone film with videos of what they're describing. So, in a way, instead of it being this long monologue like in freaking Antigone or something, you're really watching it and it's rounding out the storytelling in a way that doesn't feel like, oh my god, just make the just let this show wrap up already.

[39:36] Jess McKenna: Yeah.

[39:36] Brent Black: So like I think that um if they were to revise it, shorten it, make it a little more simple, I think it could be better. But at the same time, what were what was the audience signing up for watching a bat boy musical? You know what I mean?

[39:50] Andrew DeWolf: I don't even think it was that bad. I do agree. I think I think it just needs to be shorter and maybe not played for laughs in in the same way that it was in the version we watched. Because it it's not particularly funny, and they definitely played it for laughs.

[40:07] Brent Black: If if not for the assault by uh by Dr. Parker, I think there'd be a different way to establish why they were why as a marriage, they fell apart, or rather um became cold to each other without him having had done that, because we can I think that we can think of bats swarming around you and doing weird things. It's like yeah, yeah. And maybe it's like even like maybe they just so many of them bit her and got into her bloodstream. Like it's all yeah, it's all sci-fi shit anyway. But I think the real problem is is the assault by her husband, um unnecessary, and something that if they were to write it today, they'd probably be like, hey, you know, or not. Just snip that a little bit out.

[40:50] Brent Black: I did uh contact a few of my friends who were in this because my college put this on. I was not able to get tickets because it was such a small um engagement. It was uh basically in the round. And they had like little fishing wire with a bunch of bats attacking the actress, and they're like acting it out as it's happening. So that was how they did that.

[41:06] Jess McKenna: And I think that's equally as interesting and effective.

[41:12] Brent Black: Yeah, well, that's how the original cast did it, but again, it just i it felt like it was too late in the show to do that much of an exposition dump. Whereas that high school production I keep mentioning, they just made a w found a way to make it more entertaining and more like I don't know, you were getting so much more information. You didn't just have to be like, oh my god, you're just telling me all this stuff.

[41:34] Jess McKenna: I take a lot of umbridge with the opening of Wicked um for similar reasons where they just like dump a bunch of exposition at you and flashbacks just to pay it off in like one line at the end. But maybe something like this where we kind of get like a little montage of things happening and uh like bats attacking a woman, and then we get further context at the end, so that we're it's more of a payoff rather than uh twist. I feel like it toils too much, you would see it coming too much.

[42:02] Brent Black: That's kind of how I feel. Like, I I think maybe Jess, it's possible that you and I just feel different about twists because to me, a good act two twist, even if like you go, okay, this is corny, like of course it was there, or the mom all the time.

[42:17] Jess McKenna: Right.

[42:18] Brent Black: I just I love that feeling of oh shit, it was there all the time. Oh my god! Like, and I'll sack I I'll um trade in a lot of suspension of disbelief to get a good one of those, but they're not for everybody.

[42:31] Jess McKenna: I really like the book has like the perfect musical theater twist, and they show them on stage together with that theme playing in the first scene.

[42:40] Brent Black: Music theory nerds know by the by the time, you know, before the end of Act One, the twist in Sweeney Todd, but most people don't, because she's so gross. Like uh his ex his old his wife, I guess, is just so nasty and talking about I mean, I don't even know this is okay for your show. She's like, "Ow you like to split meme off." It's like gross. We'll just jeep.

[43:03] Jess McKenna: Yeah, it's like you can't be the lady he was in love with. Get out of here.

[43:07] Brent Black: Yeah. They do it well.

[43:09] Jess McKenna: Yeah, I mean, I like I think the twist in here is fine. I really just wish that the the mother character showed it more. I I just I really felt like that ruined the second rewatch where I'm gonna go back and be like, man, they didn't they didn't play this up at all in these.

[43:25] Brent Black: Um we will get to songs later. In "Three Bedroom House," her reaction could that is like the best reaction that can be taken in many ways. So close to the end.

[43:33] Jess McKenna: I agree. I feel like they don't do it earlier on like that much.

[43:40] Brent Black: I'm sure some of the songs have lyrics that I missed, but I feel like in all of the easier, easier to read scenes where she's just talking, it doesn't really, it's not shown through at all.

[43:52] Jess McKenna: I hope you don't mind us transferring on to other people's opinions, Brent, but it's time to compare our opinions to those of the New York theater critics.

[44:01] Brianna Jones: It is time for Breviews.

[44:04] Andrew DeWolf: Woo.

[44:05] Brianna Jones: Brie, what do we got today?

[44:07] Brianna Jones: Okay. Wow. It's been a minute.

[44:12] Brianna Jones: Okay. So we have a review from Bruce Weber of the New York Times.

[44:20] Brianna Jones: So he said of the original Off Broadway production, even if high camp is not your style, Bat Boy the Musical, um, that opened yesterday at the Union Square Theater may very well make you laugh.

[44:34] Brianna Jones: It's remarkable what intelligent wit can accomplish even within an outlandish frame.

[44:41] Brianna Jones: Derived from a dubious tabloid story about the discovery in a West Virginia cave of a creature who is half-boy, half vampire bat.

[44:52] Brianna Jones: It must be the first theatrical show to cite in the program a licensing agreement with the Weekly World News.

[44:59] Brianna Jones: The show is a tongue-in-cheek gothic morality tale bent on revealing the bat in all of us and urging us to know your bat boy slash love your bat boy slash don't deny your beast inside.

[45:15] Brent Black: I just wonder that opening is so great. I feel I love this review so much. Um, this is like one of those really rare, very well written off-Broadway reviews. Um, it just shows you the difference when you don't have a Ben Brantley at the helm. How clear and how what they're trying to say is very effective. Bree keep going.

[45:34] Brianna Jones: Mr. O'Keefe also wrote the score, uh, and with Alex Lackamore, the musical director provided the arrangements for a five-piece rock band.

[45:46] Brianna Jones: The music is tuneful, particularly in its harmonically inventive duets.

[45:53] Brianna Jones: Otherwise, it is largely devoted to satirizing Broadway schmaltz.

[45:59] Brianna Jones: Fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Frank Wildhorn, beware.

[46:03] Brianna Jones: From the moment a group of slacker spelunkers descends from the rafters into the darkness where the Bat Boy dwells, this cave rocks, and in their excitement, fire up a bong.

[46:17] Brianna Jones: Uh, the show is a jaggedly imaginative mix of skewing and self-puncturing humor.

[46:26] Brent Black: Let's just go with the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Um, this was Alex Lackamore's first um musical directing job, and he is now like the orchestrator for Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen and all that.

[46:38] Brent Black: He is and because of this, the same producer of this introduced him to one Lynn Manuel Miranda, because he was also producing the original version of In the Heights.

[46:46] Brent Black: So wow. This show's got roots that go all the way back and are still affecting us to this day.

[46:51] Brent Black: And Alex Lackamore is like the go-to musical arranger for most Broadway shows at this point. Um, so I just find that interesting that this weird off-Broadway show star jumpstarted one of the most promising careers in Broadway history.

[47:05] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. Alright, Bree, how much more we got?

[47:07] Brianna Jones: Uh, three paragraphs.

[47:09] Andrew DeWolf: Let's just skip to the second to last one.

[47:11] Brianna Jones: Let's get this one actually now. The show could probably lose twenty minutes.

[47:15] Brianna Jones: Parody always wears out its welcome after a while, but Mr. Schwartz coordinates it all with swiftness and good cheer.

[47:24] Brianna Jones: He previously worked with Mr. O'Keefe on The Mice, a kooky mini musical about an adulterous exterminator that was the opening act in three, uh, which was staged in Philadelphia last fall.

[47:38] Brianna Jones: In addition to rodent inspiration, Bat Boy shares with Mice a quirky comic sense, sweet in its way, but also fervid, wicked, and art.

[47:49] Brianna Jones: This may be conclusive evidence that Mr. Schwartz has a better touch with humor than sobriety, especially considering that Jane Eyre, the Broadway show that he directed with John Carrot, is so deadeningly sincere.

[48:06] Brent Black: That's not a real word, um, Mr. Webber.

[48:09] Brent Black: Deadeningly, deadeningly I guess use all of the endings for a word, just all at once.

[48:19] Brent Black: Deadeningly scrumptious blungums. And the Mr. Schwartz, who directed this that he refers to is actually the son of one Steven Schwartz, and has also more recently directed The Prince of Egypt in West End, which was a much worse show than this.

[48:33] Andrew DeWolf: Are you telling me people with high positions of power in the creative arts are usually children of other people with powers and high positions in the creative arts? Because I won't stand for that argument.

[48:42] Brent Black: That's impossible.

[48:44] Andrew DeWolf: It's impossible.

[48:45] Brent Black: Let's ask our good friend Ben Platt about this.

[48:52] Andrew DeWolf: Nailed it and nailed it. Bullseye.

[48:55] Brent Black: I mean, we all agree with that review. I feel like that's a fairly fair description of what it is and a fairly effective like critique of like, yeah, I probably could lose 20 minutes.

[49:05] Andrew DeWolf: I agree. And I'll talk about it. I think the 20 minutes that I could lose is some of the exposition at the end. And I don't even know where else. So I feel like that was 20 minutes in its own.

[49:14] Brent Black: Oh, the revival song's a little long, but I don't know. I can't disagree.

[49:17] Andrew DeWolf: You don't have to do that. The children, like Disney Lion King slash Little Mermaid parody is so unnecessary. Like it's a good laugh that you need in act two, I guess, but there's laughs throughout the show.

[49:30] Brent Black: Well, if Act Two is shorter, you wouldn't need that laugh.

[49:33] Andrew DeWolf: That's true. And I think the what you wanna do song, which I'll criticize more later, but um, is actually not necessary to be a song. Um, and if you just did the what you wanna do song in dialogue and skipped the children children song, that would probably buy a little bit more patience for the exposition at the end, and then if you snipped a little bit off that, I think it would be a much more zippy show.

[49:56] Brent Black: Can't disagree there. But you know what? How about we go into a mid-show and then we come back and we talk about a bunch of the songs?

[50:02] Jess McKenna: That sounds a good idea.

[50:04] Andrew DeWolf: Alright. Today's show is brought to you by the extremely kind donations by our donors at Patreon.

[50:23] Brianna Jones: Uh, you can go to Patreon if you'd like to donate some money to us to help us continue to run the show. Um you can also see all of our lovely faces right now.

[50:31] Brianna Jones: Um, and by all of ours, I mean just Brent and me. Everyone else is gone.

[50:38] Brianna Jones: Um, and here we go. Melissa Goldman, Terry Needleman, John Donna, Layton Accles, Danielle Renics, Jess the Stampede, Ewan Cassidy, Taskier, Fire of September, Monica Thoreau, Mina Mineary, Brent Black, Haley Murray, Nathaniel Stacey Coombe, Joseph Evans Green, uh Carrie Ahern, Mary Lou Choquette, John Van Alves, Russ Walker, Musical Hell, Emily Gracie, Tablam, Kyle Summers, Janae C, Scoot in the Technicolor Dreamcoat, Felice A.

[51:08] Brianna Jones: Liz Limb, Alison Stellar. Nothing is certain except Beth and Taxes, John Van Alz, Thesbian, Brenn Cullen, Wait in the Wings, Raphael Martinez Celeste, Robert Benjamin, Rachel T, Jessica T, Cass, Mitchell Young, Chai Teacup, Katie McDonough, Timothy Keyes, Jeffrey Machado, Chris Marcot, uh, Timimu Robinson, Kiji Marie Anastasio, Leela, RJ Norriga, Sebastian Canino, uh, Avan Reagan, Lizzie Keynes, Charlie B, Patrick Deering, Julia McLannan, Courtney Shriner, pardon me, uh, Joe, uh, Avery Brinson, um, uh Mary Lynn Brown, Mel Cormac, Thomas W. and La Femme Fictionale.

[51:53] Brianna Jones: They give us a little extra financial support that helps us keep the lights on here. Musicals with cheese. If you'd like to join them in supporting us, you get tons of fun perks, such as patron only commentaries, our episodes a day earlier, or even earlier, a full on Patreon with cheese podcast that's only for patrons.

[52:08] Brianna Jones: We just did Everybody's Talking About Jamie, and we're about to do Co-op um the musical. You know, the John Mulaney bullshit. Come check us out over at Patreon.

[52:16] Jess McKenna: Also, I think Andrew mentioned you can probably see all of our beautiful faces.

[52:20] Brent Black: Oh, Brent's doing a backflip. Holy shit, how'd you do that, Brent?

[52:24] Jess McKenna: Oh my god.

[52:25] Brent Black: Oh my god.

[52:27] Jess McKenna: He's like a bat boy. He's turning into a bat boy.

[52:30] Jess McKenna: You guys are missing it unless you're on the Patreon.

[52:33] Jess McKenna: In fact, I can see right on the tip of his bat boy lips. He just wants to say join join their Patreon.

[52:37] Brent Black: I would I know who he wants to say it.

[52:41] Jess McKenna: Oh no! He wanted to say it, but he couldn't. He really wanted to, but he didn't.

[52:47] Brent Black: He's mouthing it.

[52:50] Jess McKenna: You can only see his lips doing this where I'm Patreon. It's like I don't even know, but he knows.

[52:58] Andrew DeWolf: Alright, let's get back to the show.

[53:00] Brent Black: Oh. Genuinely cannot hear you, Brent.

[53:02] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, if this is this if this isn't a bit.

[53:24] Brent Black: He was dragged from his home and thrown down.

[53:28] Brent Black: At the edge of a coal mining town. They stripped him of his dignity. They beat him like a gong. And he was kicked repeatedly. And that was run.

[53:42] Brent Black: So run.

[53:48] Brent Black: Well, what's that seems?

[54:04] Brent Black: So hold me, Bat Boy. That opening number, I will say this is probably the closest thing to an earworm in this musical. I only the Patreon people can see that my jaw just fell off of my head.

[54:21] Jess McKenna: Holy shit again. Stop, stop, stop that shit.

[54:23] Brent Black: You think that you feel and again, I'm not—I know I've been disagreeing with you a lot, Jess. I'm not trying to shoot you down. I'm really not trying to shoot you down, but to you, the opener and very end epilogue closer is the catchiest song in the show. How do you not just leave going, hold me bat boy?

[54:39] Andrew DeWolf: Well, you do that because it's the last song you heard, but no, I do it because it's like the most catchy one. I mean, fast. There's other ones I can sing from it, but this isn't one that's like, yeah, that sums up the show in and of itself.

[54:51] Brent Black: It is catchy, I'll give you that.

[54:52] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[54:53] Brent Black: Um, I'm not talking that isn't me saying like it's the only one, but I'm saying it's the most for me personally.

[54:58] Andrew DeWolf: Gotcha.

[54:58] Brent Black: Gotcha. I mean, it is catchy, and I think that it is really fun. At first, when I first heard it, I was like, what the heck are they talking about? Hold me bat boy. Especially like for the first little while, I was like, what is this what did this song mean? But then when you get to the end, you're like, oh.

[55:15] Brent Black: Yeah, I think they're doing that thing where like they set up a tone that makes you go, what? But it's just getting your brain ready for the world you're entering.

[55:25] Jess McKenna: You know what I always do on this show, which is even if I like a show, I criticize some of the lyrics, and I've always found it weird that it starts out with in a cave many miles to the south. It's like, we don't even know where the fuck you are. To the south of what?

[55:25] Brent Black: Many miles to the south.

[55:40] Andrew DeWolf: It's in South Virginia.

[55:42] Brent Black: Yeah, exactly. There are many directions of Virginia's. South gets overlooked over and over again. They don't even have a senator.

[55:50] Brent Black: Um, but uh but yeah, no, I mean, it's one of those openers that I don't think it functions the way that like, you know, your Beauty and the Beast, even your Little Shop, those kind of openers. It's just a tone setter.

[56:03] Brent Black: Actually, you know what, Jess? You might have had a point more than I realized with the Little Shop comparison because the opener of Little Shop doesn't say that much, but it gets you ready for weird, spooky stuff in a shalala 1960s pop feel.

[56:18] Brent Black: So it is kind of, you know, half contentless in its actual, like, you know, there's not much to it, but what it's doing is getting the audience's brain ready for the weird thing you're about to see.

[56:29] Andrew DeWolf: It's a tonal opening.

[56:30] Brent Black: Yeah, yeah. And then and then to your point, Jess, as well, it ends um in a way that you know it wraps it around, changes the words slightly, and you're like, oh shit, oh, I get it. You know, so in that way it's well done. It's just like not my fave per se.

[56:46] Jess McKenna: No, and I don't think that this is my favorite song of the show. It's the one that sticks in my head the most. There is a thing that happens a lot in this show that bothers me, and I don't know if it bothers you as much, but there's a lot of repeating what another person says.

[57:00] Jess McKenna: Uh sometimes that works very well, like when you've got Edgar and it's for a point. And then later when, like in three-bedroom home, um, where they're just kind of repeating back and forth what the other person said, yeah. It drives me crazy a little bit.

[57:12] Brent Black: And I don't know why it drives me crazy. It's just it feels like a crutch that they lean on a lot.

[57:19] Brent Black: There's a lot of call and response style stuff, like in Christian charity, which I think of as the actual opener, the mom keeps saying Shelly Quiet in a way that's like, and you know, I'll get into that.

[57:30] Jess McKenna: Well, I mean, we're already there, right? Let's talk about Christian charity.

[57:35] Brent Black: Nowhere else to take. Mom, Shelly, quiet. Can't go to jail, he's under a mom, Shelly, quiet. Folks up at the med school bet they carve him up or bake him.

[57:46] Jess McKenna: I'd send the FBI a page. But I don't believe we're at next stage.

[57:50] Brent Black: So here he is, folks, he's all yours. Couldn't leave him out of doors, creeping on all fours. We can always shoot him. That don't seem right to me.

[58:02] Jess McKenna: I can't rid myself of my rest of charity. It's effective. Like to me, again, like I say, I think the craft of the show and the momentum of the show starts out less good than it, and the miracle of that is that I still end up loving the show, even though it's overlong and has a slow start.

[58:22] Jess McKenna: Because usually you want your first 10 minutes of a show to explode into a world we want to stick around in for two hours. And I don't know that this does that for the first 10 minutes. But anyway, um, you know, Meredith the Mom kept saying, Shelly, quiet. And it makes it seem like that's their dynamic, but you don't see much of that dynamic for the rest of the show. And maybe that's to sort of set up like they have an arc and get closer along the, uh, along the, you know, duration of the show, but it's like the next scene, you don't get any of that energy. Um, and it is very repetitive. Shelly, quiet. Um, and like throughout the show, there's that stuff. Like, um, for some reason, uh, in Three Bedroom House, Meredith says, 'A town gone insane,' and Shelly says, 'Kind of thought they would.' It's like, you're just rhyming and doing a thing to fill that space. You thought they would, you thought they would go insane when what? In the beginning of the thing? Like, you know what I mean?

[59:18] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, little chuckles. And some of them work, and some of them actually are organic and feel like a conversation. I mean, one good thing about them is that sometimes, like, the movie version of The Last Five Years is the worst about this. Sometimes a character is singing to another character for a long time, and the other character is just facially responding. But in real life, over the course of a, you know, three-minute monologue of stuff, the other person would at least be like, mm-hmm. Well, I don't know about that. Or okay, I guess you're right there, you know what I'm saying? Anything.

[59:49] Jess McKenna: Yeah, and so in a way it makes the conversations a little more realistic, but then again, a lot of times I'm like, I don't, I'm not sure I buy that you would say that there, but it does make it more conversational. Um, but it does, I think a lot of that has to do with Carrie Butler's delivery, especially in Three Bedroom Home. Um, because I'm used to the album. It's like Carrie Butler feels like she's singing to the back of the audience no matter what line she's given.

[1:00:10] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, I like a lot of her choices, and there are a few that I'm like, like for instance when she does the wiki wiki wiki kind of stuff in What You Wanna Do? The way I interpret it in the script is she's like wicky wiki wiki and then looks at her boyfriend and goes, What? And he goes, You're so hot. But like in the cast album, she's like, wiki wiki wiki, what? And it's like, okay, that's an interpretation. Uh, what is that?

[1:00:35] Jess McKenna: Yeah, I don't know. But I mean, whatever. She obviously is very talented and, uh, got the role for a reason. How about we move on to a home for you between Meredith and the Bat Boy?

[1:00:44] ♪ Musical number: "Home for You" — performed by Carrie Butler ♪

[1:01:42] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, Home for You, which is the first like moment where Meredith shows her sympathetic side, where anyone really shows their sympathetic side in this. Um, and it's the first quote unquote emotional connection song, um, since we've kind of been like yucks and jokes up to this point. And I think it's very well integrated into it. It feels, it doesn't throw you off immediately, the way that a lot of like, okay, and now here's a little bit of a sappier moment. I like it.

[1:02:11] Jess McKenna: And I like the Bat Boy like humming along.

[1:02:14] Andrew DeWolf: Yes, a lot. I thought that that was really cool. I kind of thought that was gonna be all he did, and you know, then he starts talking. So, you know, it took a wild turn, but I do like that they start him out like this.

[1:02:27] Jess McKenna: Yeah, it's, it really nails multiple tones at the same time. Like the way they chose to have Edgar sing falsetto gets a laugh in most productions at first. And then when he's like doing the ooh, I can't, I can't hit the notes right now without yelling, uh, but like he's doing this almost choral, ooh, like toward the end, and it's funny, but also it's a very pretty song.

[1:02:51] Andrew DeWolf: He's doing this lilting choral melody, so it really does, it's a little bit touching and a little bit funny, and I think it really works. It's very pretty. It's that fine line, that Little Shop line where it's like very sincere, but also funny because of how sincere it's playing it.

[1:03:07] Jess McKenna: Yes.

[1:03:07] Andrew DeWolf: Though at the end when she's like, see, look, I made a stew. Look at that and go, Yeah. Did you just run out of ooh rhymes? Cause like, I mean, I guess her feeding him and him eating, he finally eats from the thing. So I mean, that's a connection, but it felt like a weird, like, I don't know, a first thought lyric when I first heard it.

[1:03:26] Jess McKenna: It's also where I thought they were gonna set up that he only eats human blood or something.

[1:03:29] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[1:03:30] Jess McKenna: Um, because he was like throwing up with the stew. Um, but that they didn't go that quite that direction. It was more just he likes blood in general.

[1:03:39] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[1:03:40] Jess McKenna: Speaking of horrible people that like blood, let's talk about Dance With Me, Darling.

[1:03:40] ♪ Musical number: "Dance With Me, Darling" — performed by the cast ♪

[1:04:13] Andrew DeWolf: This song is uncomfortable in the way that I think the writers intended it to be.

[1:04:18] Jess McKenna: Yeah.

[1:04:19] Andrew DeWolf: Dr. Parker is horrible, and I think you're supposed to think that.

[1:04:23] Jess McKenna: So yeah, he's a very nuanced villain, though, I have to say. Like for a show that you know has such archetypal, we're Southern ranchers, we like church revivals. Like, he could be like, he's not.

[1:04:38] Andrew DeWolf: Right.

[1:04:38] Jess McKenna: He's not, yeah, he does some bad shit. He's irredeemable, but he's not, he doesn't lack nuance.

[1:04:46] Andrew DeWolf: Uh, it's a very weird song, and the idea that, like, oh, really? Y'all are basically in present day, and this is a song you used to like back in the day, this 1940s Mambo, this song that sounds like, I mean, again, that's, that's really, really spicy opinion, and it doesn't really bother me, but it is uncomfortable because it's a catchy little fun number. One of the more fun ones we've had so far, and it is simultaneously about marital strife and marital decay.

[1:05:16] Jess McKenna: Yeah, exactly. The only thing that gets weird about this song is you would think he would have a harsher reaction to seeing the Bat Boy again right away, you know.

[1:05:24] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, and I think that again, I think I, I didn't, I didn't specifically like go over and really pay close attention to the, you know, the performance of the actors that I saw. But I think that the script perhaps leaves it a little too vague and a little too open so that certain companies and directors can do it worse. And maybe the script actually doesn't help at all and goes against that. But it's like, you know, if you're in previews of a show and people keep saying, I saw the twist coming, you'll make a lot of sacrifices to make sure they don't, you know.

[1:05:59] Jess McKenna: I get, I mean, I'd rather the twist makes sense than maybe one or two people seeing it coming, if that makes sense.

[1:06:05] Andrew DeWolf: I feel like it would be even, it might be a little more interesting if he has this really harsh reaction to seeing the Bat Boy, but it's not quite explained why.

[1:06:15] Jess McKenna: Right.

[1:06:15] Andrew DeWolf: Um, just be because he's like really, really like, oh, that's all gross.

[1:06:19] Jess McKenna: Yeah.

[1:06:20] Andrew DeWolf: Right, like a line like, what is this thing doing here? Like, like one of those like, and it might be in there and I just forgot, like one of those dual meaning lines that you can do just right. Because if he said, you, like, okay, that gives the whole thing away.

[1:06:34] Jess McKenna: Yeah, you can't play the give the whole game away.

[1:06:36] Andrew DeWolf: But like, it just, it feels a little odd because he comes in and he's like, Oh my goodness, this Bat Boy is ugly. Also, like, man, we should have sex.

[1:06:46] Jess McKenna: Not to get too far afield from the thing he wants every day and every night.

[1:06:51] Andrew DeWolf: Oh, there's a weird Bat Boy. Interesting. Will you please touch my people? This Bat Boy that I was supposed to have killed years ago is now in my home, and my wife is interested in keeping it alive.

[1:07:01] Jess McKenna: Hmm, we should have sex.

[1:07:03] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, maybe I could leverage that for the thing when I watch it.

[1:07:10] Jess McKenna: Val's shaking her head. That means I've gone one step too far.

[1:07:15] Andrew DeWolf: It just, it does feel a little bit out of character once you see the ending, and it's like, wait, this is like a monster that he gave birth to. Like, wouldn't he be like horrified that it's around?

[1:07:27] Jess McKenna: I don't know.

[1:07:28] Andrew DeWolf: Well, isn't that the idea though? He wants to kill it, and she's like, don't, and then he's like, Will you have sex with me? And she's like, uh, fine. And he's like, hooray, I'm gonna dance around now.

[1:07:40] Jess McKenna: You know?

[1:07:41] Andrew DeWolf: That is what happens, yeah. This is a plot of a musical, guys.

[1:07:44] Jess McKenna: It's a goofball.

[1:07:46] Andrew DeWolf: It's goofy. They play it goofy enough. These aren't like, these aren't like real criticisms, I'm just saying.

[1:07:51] Jess McKenna: No, we're just, we're playing a goof.

[1:07:53] Andrew DeWolf: And then like it's not good faith criticism there, not at all.

[1:07:56] Brent Black: Um, all right, Brent, what's the next song you want to talk about?

[1:07:59] Brent Black: Well, I just want to quickly touch on Show You a Thing or Two.

[1:08:02] Jess McKenna: Yes.

[1:08:02] Brent Black: So I think musical theater is a uniquely difficult, uh, form of storytelling in which to do sort of a training montage, kind of like, you know, seeing the progression of something that probably takes probably realistically, well, we're not in realistic terms, but even in by the show's terms, certainly weeks or months. Um, and I just think it's done really well.

[1:08:25] Andrew DeWolf: And to be s to be fair, it does get a little over elaborate right at the end. Like it just refuses to end. But I just think it's really good. It's a tentpole number we need at that point in the show, and totally off topic. I think it's, um, good, and I appreciate the fact that in Edgar's essay he says that man is nephew to an ape rather than descended to it, descended from an ape. Uh, love that scientific correctness. Way to go.

[1:08:49] Jess McKenna: Well done.

[1:08:50] Brent Black: It also flows off the tongue better than descendant. Nephew just feels right. Like, and that's one of those words that also just feel right when you say it. And it feels more erudite and British, which is what you know the audience is introducing you to with him there. Those are my thoughts on Show You a Thing or Two.

[1:09:06] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. I mean, it feels like a modern major general in its kind of form, but it's doing so much it is doing so much, you're right. Like lyrically, this is probably where it's the strongest.

[1:09:15] Brent Black: Yeah, this show has really good, uh, like it has a re, when it does it when it, okay, what am I trying to say? It has songs that get you from point A to point B. And some musicals don't. Like you look at Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Well, it's a farce, so it wasn't supposed to, but those songs take you from A to slightly bigger A. Whereas this show has so many songs that really do move the plot forward, and I think this might be the best one.

[1:09:39] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, no, I agree.

[1:09:40] Brent Black: Fantastic. Almost why this plot feels so convoluted in some places because they're able to just keep moving the plot through songs that are so short that it's just like something is just happening all the time. You're, there's never a dull moment.

[1:09:53] Jess McKenna: Yeah. There was a thought I was having while watching it, um, where it feels like the book writers and the songwriters are not always on the same wavelength with one another. It feels like there's a lack of communication between them sometimes.

[1:10:06] Andrew DeWolf: Like it feels like they're like the book, it gels in it one way and the song is gelling one another way, and then you mix it together and it isn't quite a chocolate and peanut butter. Not that the tastes are wrong, it's just not perfect, yeah.

[1:10:18] Brent Black: Yeah, and I do think that goes to what I was saying about. Sometimes it feels like two shows in one, like a marble cake, and like there's parody elements. There's a parody song here, there's the, you know, What You Wanna Do with the sort of making fun of hip-hop, and then you've, and it makes you wonder if the book writers wrote the whole story out and then it was adapted, or if they were like, you know, Florence O'Keefe was like, I need a scene here in between these things, but there is some disconnect.

[1:10:47] Andrew DeWolf: It doesn't necessarily feel like they sewed the Frankenstein monsters' parts up enough perfectly and seamlessly to make it seem like it was all one thing.

[1:10:56] Brent Black: Completely agree.

[1:10:58] Jess McKenna: Um, yeah, I feel like that's the biggest issue, but then we got a great song like Comfort and Joy.

[1:11:02] ♪ Musical number: "Comfort and Joy" — performed by the cast ♪

[1:11:48] Brent Black: I love a good act one closer where everyone's plan is recapped with a cliffhanger at the end. Can't get enough of that. Best come back for act two. Don't want to miss what happens, everybody.

[1:11:57] Jess McKenna: We're gonna send you Rock into the Restroom, as they say in Gutenberg the Musical.

[1:12:03] Andrew DeWolf: I feel like any song, any song where Bat Boy is singing from the point where he can talk onward is generally pretty good. Except for no, uh, there's not really that many exceptions. Bat Boy is just really good on stage when, uh, when he's singing.

[1:12:17] Brent Black: So I really like all of them.

[1:12:19] Andrew DeWolf: Um, but yeah, the Act One closer was pretty solid for what it is.

[1:12:25] Jess McKenna: Um, yeah, I mean it's a Bat Boy show. What do you, what do you want?

[1:12:29] Andrew DeWolf: I just love that as an idea for like a poster blurb.

[1:12:33] Jess McKenna: You know, pretty solid for what it is.

[1:12:35] Andrew DeWolf: I mean, it's a Bat Boy.

[1:12:37] Jess McKenna: I mean, I don't know. I, I had fun with a lot of the songs, you know. They go through a lot of music styles, and, and I, I don't, I don't know if I know if I have any specific talking points on this song.

[1:12:50] Brent Black: You see, uh, I like most of them, to be honest.

[1:12:54] Jess McKenna: It is uh man, we we haven't really talked about much of the ensemble because really we really want to focus on the family, and this is kind of one of those songs where they're so involved and so important to what's gonna happen.

[1:13:06] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[1:13:07] Jess McKenna: What do we think of the ensemble? What do we think of the people that aren't a part of the Parker family?

[1:13:12] Brent Black: Everyone's playing so many parts, it's kind of ridiculous. Like, I think I was looking on the wiki for this, and they were saying that like it's like a 10-person show with 23 characters or something like that. Like, it it's kind of absurd how many roles that they're having each one of these ensemble members play.

[1:13:31] Jess McKenna: Yeah, and I think that's a real symptom of off-Broadway. Like um, you know, Khan might uh parody plus show. Um, I hope. Uh, you know, I talked to some producers about it when it was like a cast of twelve or 13, and the producers that know off-Broadway were like, you want to get that fucker down to eight. Maybe ten, but you need to get that thing down to eight because the off-Broadway market is hard. It's actually harder than Broadway in a certain sense. And so, yeah, them getting a cast of 10 and having lots of doubling is very endemic specifically to off-Broadway, whereas community theater, they might be like, uh, the more the merrier. Let's get so-and-so's grandpa. Let's get, oh, you get one line, little Timmy, you know. Um who auditioned, get it up hot.

[1:14:17] Brent Black: Yeah, I mean, I it's interesting. Like the show does have an amalgam of tones that to me gel well enough, but the townspeople are not nuanced. They are a monolith of uh, we're facing poverty, you know, like they're they're yokels. And, you know, you've got like the sheriff is kind of half and half.

[1:14:37] Jess McKenna: Um the sheriff's the only one who sticks by Bat Boy.

[1:14:40] Brent Black: Yeah.

[1:14:40] Jess McKenna: The whole show for the most part.

[1:14:42] Brent Black: Yeah. Um I think uh the townspeople are mostly just a joke. I already said the one joke where the whole family dies, basically. Um, but then there's uh other jokes where the the cow farmers, the cattle farmers are they think that there's something killing all their cows, and we're led to believe it's Bat Boy, but they say it's just because they're trying to grow cow uh raise cows on the side of a mountain.

[1:15:03] Jess McKenna: Yeah.

[1:15:04] Brent Black: That's a great gag.

[1:15:05] Jess McKenna: That's a great payoff.

[1:15:07] Brent Black: Yeah, it is a great gag. And I think sometimes if you if you shroud or package uh sort of like information that's gonna be a twist later, misleading information and a bit of a mystery. If you can shroud and package that in something really goofy, it's like the audience might not be like, ooh, wait, I'm putting things together. It's like, oh, these goofballs. And it does seem like you're gonna find out Edgar's been somehow going off and killing these cows, and that ratchets up the tension of, oh, when they find out, when they prove it, he's dead, you know. When in fact, no. And and I think, you know, this show has a lot to say about not just religion, but things that can feel kind of similar to religion if you come from like a non-religious perspective, believing things, jumping to conclusions. Um, but anyway, yeah. Uh I think the townspeople, though, they serve their purpose, though they are the least nuanced characters in the show, for sure.

[1:16:02] Jess McKenna: Um, that being said, I love comfort and joy. I love the part where Edgar prays to God and asks him to take away his fangs. One of the biggest emotional moments in the show because I just get it. We all have something that it's like, God, I I wish I wasn't like this. I wish something could take this thing away. And it's it's one of the first points in the show where if you haven't been emotional up to this point, uh, you might. This is where it happens for me. Um, let's go on to a joyful noise. I know this is one of Brent's favorite songs in the entire world. He said so earlier.

[1:16:33] ♪ Musical number: "A Joyful Noise" ♪

[1:17:28] Brent Black: Um, I mean, okay. You gotta start act two with a bang, if at all possible. Um, especially in a comedy. I first off, love a good musical theater gospel song. This I think is actually slightly closer to authentic than some musical theater gospel songs, like um, gotta build a mountain. Like, that's not. Or like run freedom run. Those are like just compared to I love my dead gay son from Heathers, which is another gospel song that opens Act Two.

[1:17:56] Jess McKenna: Yeah, I oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that.

[1:17:58] Brent Black: I I I really like this one. And one thing I'll say is I've never quite gotten on board with the way the crowd is so unenthused when they repeat what the pastor sings at the first part of the thing. Like it's very it's a very hard joke to sell. The pastor goes, make a joyful noise, master. And then the crowd goes, make a joyful noise, my though. Like they're off key, they're unenthused, and that's the thing. People do that, especially Catholics. No offense, Catholics, but you're you sing hymns, you sing hymns like like your parents are forcing you to, and you're grumpy about it. Um they are. But I mean, I would be. Jeez. Um, but the thing is, right after that, the crowd's like, oh, on this brand new day.

And it's like, wait, you were just unenthused, and then after they're all excited doing that part, they forget to sing, and the pastor's like, hello? It's just inconsistent. They can't decide what they want to do there, and it's a joke. They wanted a gag, but the gag didn't fit.

[1:18:57] Jess McKenna: Right.

[1:18:58] Brent Black: Well, it's just very hard, I think, to have the gag be that the singers as a group are bad. Because when people in a group sing badly in this setting, you could there's a lot of other reasons that might be. So it's hard to sell it because you're like, can they not hear? Why do they dig? Are they are they actually shitty? What's going on? You know what I mean? What happened? But um, yeah, I think it's a banger, and I think the way that it bookends the next song um is very good. Without it bookending the next song, it would be a fluffy, let's get back into it with a fun little tune. But I think it actually has storytelling purpose uh in the way that it's reprised after the next song. Which the next song is probably the most important song in the entire musical, which is uh let me walk among you. The Bat Boy's big number.

[1:19:40] ♪ Musical number: "Let Me Walk Among You" ♪

[1:20:39] Brent Black: I think this is one of the best songs on the show.

[1:20:43] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, yeah.

[1:20:44] Brent Black: Um Bat Boy sells it, he kills it, and it's kind of a shame that immediately afterwards it all get gets ruined.

[1:20:51] Jess McKenna: But yeah, we don't get a moment of happiness.

[1:20:53] Brent Black: I think that's the thing, though. The end of this sequence with the joyful noiser prease is so joyful. It is so exciting. Watching uh on YouTube, there's a bootleg of the original cast, and watching the elation of the audience and hearing the explosive applause. And of course, um the guy, Devin Mae, who played Edgar hit an eighth, like a high A flat. So you clap for that anyway, generally, but but um yeah, Let Me Walk Among You is one of those songs where I have problems with the lyrics, but the idea behind it and the music just I this song can legitimately make me cry. Um and for those that don't know, obviously, this is a song where he just he the the pastor is said oh no, Edgar has said, I want to be healed, I want to be saved, and then he just you know comes and I guess the pastor touches his head, and then Edgar sings a song about, you know, I uh let me just be part of your society.

Um and some issues I have, like he's listing all the things that people do that he wants to do. Kind of like that um Hunchback of Notre Dame or Hunchback of Notre Dame movie thing where like he's he's listing the things he sees people do and wants to do them too. But when he says going to work, building your schools, how many schools are being built that like he can see out the window? I don't know. That's like as opposed to going to school. I don't know.

[1:22:13] Jess McKenna: It's South Virginia, you know.

[1:22:16] Brent Black: I am a CPA. Okay. That one bothered. Now look, Jess, let me file your taxes. I am a CPA is my favorite joke in the whole show. All right. Again, I I wonder, because I've seen it done badly. That high school version I saw, he did like the YMCA arms on CPA and it landed with a thud. But in the original version, Devin Mae just is just he's just as proud of it as anything. He's like trying to say, like, I I can help you with your taxes. I am a CPA. Like he's been stuck at home and he got certified as an accountant. Oh my God. That's so funny. But the rhyme scheme in the bridge always hits me weird. The way they said it in the music, and it feels like um class rhymes with part, even though it then wraps around to end with glass. So glass and class rhyme, but the way it's set really like takes me out of it. It's so bad. Not bad. It's just so spicy and like unexpected for no apparent reason.

[1:23:13] Jess McKenna: He's talking shit about his favorite song of all time.

[1:23:16] Brent Black: I mean, here's the thing. Again, this song can make me cry, but there I have to. There's a I'm having an emotional experience hat, and there's a if I were to give this a grade, it wouldn't be an A plus because of that, you know. Um But then it's Is there a song that you would give an A plus, just in the general pantheon of musical theater?

[1:23:35] Jess McKenna: No, and that's such is the nature of my brain. Almost ladies who lunch, but um there's one thing in it that that I think is like grammatically wrong, and I can't think of it at the moment, but it's like um shit. Um, like could I leave you is good. It's not, it's not uh anyway, whatever. Fuck that. Um so uh we go into we we go from Let Me Walk Among You, and then at the end he's like, um, won't just one person shake my hand, and then the town says, okay, and Edgar can't believe it, and they go back into the joyful noise gospel song, and now they're all singing it absolutely elated. They dance around, they accept him. Um, and I think it's like Bat Boy. They do, and I think part of it's like if the pastor accepts him, then all these people that just go along with that are like, oh, okay, let's alright, cool.

But um uh, you know, like I said, if if Edgar can hit the super high A flat that's called for, or at least the E natural at the end, ooh boy. That's that is that's a number for me. I I I agree. Although I don't like that okay, okay, okay, okay. It's that call and response thing that always is like in the just don't like gospel music.

[1:24:51] Andrew DeWolf: No, I like gospel music. I don't like that specific.

[1:24:54] Brent Black: God knows the best gospel songs have strings of the word okay. Um Jesus, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay. That's between you and Jesus. It's Jesus loves the fault at our star, so that's really where he gets it. Okay, okay, okay.

[1:25:16] Jess McKenna: On that note, let's talk about children.

[1:25:19] ♪ Musical number: "Children" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[1:26:05] Jess McKenna: And what we thought was lost at last is the god of Pan comes and convinces these two siblings to fuck.

[1:26:16] Andrew DeWolf: We don't know that yet, though.

[1:26:17] Brent Black: True.

[1:26:18] Andrew DeWolf: All in hindsight.

[1:26:19] Brent Black: True.

[1:26:20] Jess McKenna: And neither do they. I think it's really important to keep in mind, like it's gross at all.

[1:26:24] Andrew DeWolf: No.

[1:26:25] Brent Black: It's gross, but like from their perspective, it's perfectly natural and naive, you know.

[1:26:29] Jess McKenna: Yeah, it's just, you know, we know it's gross.

[1:26:32] Andrew DeWolf: A girl and her bat boy.

[1:26:33] Brent Black: That's right. Any of you seen Tromeo and Juliet?

[1:26:37] Jess McKenna: No.

[1:26:37] Andrew DeWolf: No.

[1:26:39] Brent Black: The twist in that movie is that Tromeo and Juliet are brother and sister, and they're like, oh, let's just keep fucking because we brought the families together.

[1:26:47] Jess McKenna: Like, that's how they resolve that.

[1:26:49] Andrew DeWolf: And that was the vibe I was getting once that twist. I was like, man, that that's that's about it.

[1:26:53] Brent Black: I mean, that's definitely not how they resolve this one, though.

[1:26:57] Jess McKenna: No.

[1:26:58] Andrew DeWolf: I mean, they don't resolve it at all, really.

[1:27:01] Brent Black: Well, it's kind of just this happening incites Dr. Parker into killing Bat Boy.

[1:27:05] Jess McKenna: Yeah, basically, that's about it. I think my umbrage with this scene, um, is just it kind of distracts, and it's a different vibe than every other scene in there.

[1:27:17] Andrew DeWolf: It's just weird. Like, Pan comes out, and it's like, is this a dream? Like, it feels like a different show. It feels like a different show. And to me, it's like songs like "Kiss the Girl" or "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," like that kind of thing. And of course, you can do it in a way that's really funny with all the different like, uh, creatures of the forest banging, but I don't know. Like, I just don't think it's necessary. You could consider it one last moment of true levity before we go into kind of a gauntlet of darkness, but I just think, you know, we keep agreeing that the show is a tiny bit overlong. To me, this is, you know, suspect number one. Just make it where in the "Inside Your Heart" scene they're laying together and they say something that the adults in the audience will be like, "Ah, y'all did it."

It could even be funny. Like, you're being like, "Usually take that long," and she's like, "I mean, more like at least a minute, but whatever." You know, like that kind of just a little gag so that we know what they did, kids don't know that boy. You come too hard. Um, do they usually stage it when they do this? Because in ours, it's very graphic, she's blowing him and all that, and like, yeah. Um, I've seen it more like the sex going on is, um, the enthusiastic sex is all the animals around them, and they're more in a "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," "Kiss the Girl" kind of thing, and like, is there kissing? Do they lie down? Yes, but it's not, you don't need to see him humping her, and that's not the joke.

The joke. Okay, that's what we got, because they're like violently having sex. They did think the joke was that. Yeah. And you could stage it that way, and maybe there's a way to make that funny, but in my mind, it's like, that's to me, that's, I don't know. I wouldn't direct it that way, but that's just me. If it felt this moment felt the most like, uh, like Star Kid Gratic. Yeah, very gratitude. Exactly. It's just like this raunchy, like, okay. Is this quite the same? "Rocky Horror Picture Show" when Frank is like coming into everyone's rooms. That was the vibe of that scene. Yeah, kind of. Um, which is its own kind of like in "Rocky Horror," it's like, oh, this is different. This is graphic in a different way.

Kind of like when Frankenfurter randomly says, "A mental mind fuck can be nice." And it's like, that was your F bomb. You had one F bomb and that was it? I don't know. Um, it just sticks out. It just sticks out. It's still rated R. It's not even like they're one F-bomb. It's not like they're PG-13. They could have said fuck the entire time. Exactly. To me, it's just like, what? Okay. But, but Children can be a very fun, funny song if staged, uh, I would say in a way that is successful to that end. Cut it. Don't fuck your sister, kids. Alright, moving on. Um, what do you think of like the final moment, the "I'm not a boy" moment, you know, where he decides like I am not a human being? Like, I feel like that's honestly the most heartbreaking point where he just resigns himself to like, I am an animal.

I like it a lot, and I feel like it's the final statement before, well, it's the penultimate statement of the idea that you can't repress your true nature. And unless your true nature is, you know, uh, desiring acts that are illegal and immoral, um, like your sister. There you go. Um, embrace it or come to terms with it, and you know, it feels like the kind of, again, an allegory for someone who isn't accepted in society and kill, uh, I mean, uh, this is, we didn't mention this in the content warning, but we're already kind of going some places, like the kind of person that does self-harm, let's say, because the world doesn't accept them, and they feel like they're not a person or not, uh, a worthy person.

I'm not a boy, I'm an animal, I'm not worthy, I'm not adequately human. Um, it is very heartbreaking. Poor Bat Boy dies, and so does everybody else, except for Shelley. And then the show. And the fun dies too. Um, so you gotta hold your bat boy. Touch your bad boy. Touch your bad boy. Um, yeah, it was wild though. We're talking about the finale. Uh, and it's a song, but also the what goes along with it is the explanation, the backstory, which we've sort of covered, but it's just wild that a random high school, you know, 15-20 years after the show came out, did so much better and more engaging, uh, a staging and a version of the way that they explained that backstory than the original in 2001.

But that just goes to show theater is a living art, you know. No, what is your overall thoughts on Bat Boy, everybody? Well, I liked Bat Boy. I think it's fun, you know. I don't know if I have a whole ton to say about it. I just thought it was an enjoyable, uh, enjoyable romp. Um, you will not be bored for even a second because there is constantly something happening, um, that will eventually blow you away. Although we have completely spoiled everything. Um, though, you know, I think it's still ruin it. I feel like knowing the information will not destroy the content within the show. Yeah, this show I don't think is like, and you know better than me, but it's not like a, uh, Roger Ebert movie review, like should you go see it?

Should you not? Like I think it's spoiler. Like it's for people that already know this. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, as far as a cheese rating, I'm gonna give it, uh, West Virginia blue cheese. Ooh from Nice. Oh boy, Spring Gap Mountain Creamery in West Virginia. So there you go. Um, alright. Um, Brent, I know you got a lot to say. What is your overall thoughts on the Bat Boy, the musical? Well, sometimes I dislike a good show or I dislike something that is largely liked because of small nitpicky things. And this shows the opposite. I like this show despite all my nitpicky things. It speaks to me on a deep level. Um, again, being raised Christian, hating myself for the things that tempted me and the ways that I did, you know, the ways that I sinned and disrespected God, blah, blah, blah.

To see another, um, little bald child, um, uh, deal with that. I'm kind of kidding about the bald part, but, um, to see someone go through that in a way that is heightened and by making it fantasy and melodrama, it's, um, made literally more emotional. Uh, it just really does it for me. Again, I wish the show just were better and more fun faster, sooner. Um, and I have nitpicks here and there with the lyrics and the dialogue, but yeah, I just, I find it to be, um, a show that despite everything succeeds at what it's going for. And, um, before we, uh, before we did the show, what am I trying to say? Before we started recording, I Googled this, but apparently any mammal milk can be converted to some kind of cheese.

We drink milk. We drink mil. We drink milk from ruminants because they can produce a large amount of milk, like ruminants being cows, for instance. Um, and their, you know, their teats are easy to grasp and to milk. You can milk your pets, you can make cheese out of any mammal's milk. So my cheese rating is gonna be something that's also probably great, even though it's considered by some to be gross or, uh, or unlikely to be good, and that is bat milk. You heard it here first. You know what? That's such a good idea. I'm shocked that it isn't in the show. Yeah, I was about to say. I mean, it's not a cheese though, Brent. So sorry, my bad bat milk cheese. Turn it into cheese. Yeah, okay. That's fine.

That's fine. My research didn't define, didn't define whether you can make, I don't know, a cheddar, a bat Brie, some kind of, some kind of bat, I don't know. Brie, what kind of cheese would a bat make? Brie. And I would like that you all refer to me as Bat Brie for the rest of the month. Bat Bree. Well, Bat Bree, what is your overall thoughts on our discussion and your cheese rating on what we chatted about? I think you guys, I haven't done one of these in so long. This is so weird. I've missed you so much. It's been months. This is the first show we're recording, and I know they're gonna be swapped. Um, but I think this was just a great time to come back. Brent is here, and I don't know, the discussion it just always opens up, and I feel like he brings out a different side of you too.

So I am just so happy that this was the episode I came back on, and I think you guys did a wonderful job talking about Bat Boy, and I was Googling it while you guys were talking about it, and it looks like a lot of fun, and I hope to see it one day. And my cheese is an Asiago cheese bat cracker. Oh. I looked up bat cheese, and there is apparently a motherfucker. Don't you don't you fucking steal mine before I can even say it. Don't you fucking steal it? Don't you? And you might already stole it from you. Are you kidding me? You already gave it bat cheese. Okay, hold on. I'm gonna show you what mine is. Um, I like Bat Boy, it's good. But hold on, let me show you what my bat cheese is. Yeah, because you need to see this.

Um, share, um, share screen. I feel like I do this every time. Oh, is that your mouse that you're, cause because all I see is your hand underneath your desk moving back and forth, and I was like, Jess, what are you doing? Um, oh, I see. That's my bat cheese ball. I'm giving it a bat cheese ball. Wow. I like the olives for eyes. Same. I do love any excuse to put olives in things. Prep will be my mouse. Oh, I love olives. Pimento, black, green, uh, all the, what is it, manzanilla, whatever that one is. Fun times. Put the olives in my face. Brent, thank you for joining us. It was honestly an honor to chat with you again and talk with you about something you obviously are passionate about. This is a great musical, and thank you for giving me an excuse to finally watch it.

I know you've got a great amount of content out there, promote it for the world. Okay. Um, and yeah, it was nice to do a show where I really genuinely like the show, uh, for once instead of having a lot of misgivings. So if you are interested in my funny songs about video games, sometimes using the music from them, that's at youtube.com slash brentalfloss. I also do videos where I break down other musicals I don't like or things I don't like about them. Um, but I am currently writing a Star Trek parody musical, specifically of the Wrath of Khan called "Con the Musical," and you can follow the development of it and the behind the scenes weird thoughts I have about it at twitter.com slash UASTPM.

That stands for Unauthorized Star Trek Parody Musical. It's a terrible name for a Twitter. Um, UAS T P M. And you can also follow me personally at Brentalfloss on Twitter. Also, if you like having fun game nights with your friends, you should buy his video game. Use Your Words. Yes, if you like Jackbox, we're, um, we're cheaper than a Jackbox party pack, and there's like 18 hours of non-repeating content, and it's really fun. And one thing I always say, by the way, thanks, Jess. One thing I always say about the game is if you buy it on a platform that doesn't let you return the game, like, like the Switch doesn't let you return the game. If you buy it and you don't like it, I will personally PayPal you the price of it.

Uh, I believe in it that strongly. No questions asked. You didn't like it, let me know your PayPal email or your cash app. Alright. Um, Brent, thank you for joining us. Um, Andrew, you know who else is a wonderful, wonderful human being? Um, our patrons? No, the Bat Boy, but also our patrons. Thank you guys for listening. Please follow us on iTunes, Spotify, sit your at musicals with cheese, or on Twitter at cheesy musicals. We're on Patreon at musicals with cheese, Instagram musicals with cheese, YouTube page musicals with cheese. We have a patron-only podcast that is going on weekly called Patreon with Cheese. Check that out. We got a lot of cool shit going on there. Email us at musicaltheatrelives@gmail.com. Tell us how wrong we are.

We often are. Our title card was created by the amazing Jolene Casco. Go send her some love on Instagram at Jolene Casco. Our keeper of the cheese is Juliet Antonio. Thank you for keeping track of our cheese ratings because God knows I wasn't gonna do it. This show is produced by the amazing, the wonderful, I'm so fucking glad you're back. Brianna Jones! Our themes were created by, oh, sorry about that. Uh, if you've noticed we have very fancy theme songs that relate to whatever show we're talking about, and they are created by the amazing Robin Nash of IOU Music UK. Go check out her stuff. Thank you to the Broadway Podcast Network for having us on the platform and for not kicking us off for talking about fucking your sister so much.

Alright, you guys, is there anything else you want to say before we wrap this up? This has been a true pleasure, and thank you for having me again, fellas. Fellas and lady. Et al. So glad to have you on. Can't wait to have you on for Gutenberg in the new near future. Oh, please, absolutely. Okay. Andrew, anything else you want to say to Brent before we say goodbye? Oh boy. Um, yeah. This is like when, this is like when your mom makes you hug your uncle at Thanksgiving. Like, can we just leave? Can't we just go? I don't want to. I mean, we're just, we're just waiting for Jess to leave the show, and then it'll just be us two. And it'll finally be what it was always meant to be. Yeah. We'll see you next time on Musicals with Cheese. Bye.

[1:41:40] Andrew DeWolf: Hold me a bat boy. Touch me, bat boy, feel me bat boy, milk me bat boy.