I FIRST saw this show back in January 2022, also at The Alex, where the excellent PR team had invited several chapters of leather clad biker clubs to circumnavigate the theatre as we queued to get our Covid passes checked.

Whilst those dark days of emerging from the pandemic now seem a distant bad dream, I have fond memories of that Harley-Davidson throttle revving roar and the heavenly smell of gasoline on the crisp winter air.

No Harley greeting this time sadly – but no queuing and no masks either, just a buzz of excitement from an audience of mostly old rockers here to celebrate some of the greatest anthems ever written.  These from the pen of the now sadly passed Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf. I confess when the house is empty and with the aid of ‘Alexa’, singing along at the top of my voice to their top tunes is a guilty pleasure.

Picture by Mark Senior. Chris Davis Studio. s

As the audience enter the auditorium, I-spy biker boys and girls dotted around designer Jon Bausor’s huge wall-to-wall set.

There are rocks, a mysterious tunnel, two enormous movie screens and a house perched stage left – through which we can see a bedroom and more. Keyboard players, percussionists and rock guitarists can be spotted at various heights making a literal ‘Wall of Rock’.

The house lights go and MD Iestyn Griffiths strikes up the band. Except we don’t get the opening number straight away, just a dramatic crash and a spotlight on our heroine Raven, who delivers a hard-core prologue about how she tried to kill her father with a Fender Stratocaster.

Picture by Mark Senior. Chris Davis Studio. s

What follows is an unpretentious full-on Rock Opera – one which blatantly steals bits of plots from the literary classics and stirs them up in a melting pot.  Don’t try to look for it to make sense, especially common sense; there’s nothing common about Steinman’s book for ‘Bat Out of Hell’ and why, the only sense is adorable ‘non’ sense.

The story – such as it is – is a mash- up of Peter Pan and Romeo and Juliet with a bit of Alice in Wonderland, The Lost Boys and Sleeping Beauty thrown in – all set in some crazy dystopian world of rich folk living above ground and poor, never-grow-old teenagers in the mole-hole catacombs –  where after her preamble, Raven escapes down a tunnel to hook up with her tribe.

Katie Tonkinson who plays Raven has charisma in spades plus an awesome voice to take us with her on her journey. Her travelling companion is Pan – or rather Strat – reprised by a ripped, athletic and vocally resonant Glenn Adamson.

In the rich house – and also reprising their roles as the baddy-daddy Falco and his wife Sloane – are the mighty Rob Fowler and the vivacious Sharon Sexton. They have their own raunchy back story of ‘love’s labour’s lost’.

This is a large, hard-working company directed with a take-no-prisoners brashness by Jay Scheib and with full-on choreography from Xena Gusthart.

Apart from the four main principals, stand out performances for me from the highly talented general company are Joshua Dever as Hoffman, Beth Woodcock as Vilmos  and Harriet Richardson-Cockerline  as Spinotti – mucho-magnetism.

Picture by Mark Senior. Chris Davis Studio. s

All the action is captured live on stage by a roving cameraman and transmitted straight onto the giant screens. I also am a great fan of the current trend of using handheld mics. It’s retro and – a bit like vinyl records – a gutsier sound.

Story aside (and I personally like it better than Ben Elton’s ‘We will Rock You’ book) what we all came to see and hear are the Steinman/Meatloaf classics and they just keep coming. We were, of course; ‘Dead Ringers for Love’ and ‘For Crying Out Loud’ ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me,’ You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ and ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad’.

Come the walkdown, we were on our feet joining in – Bat lovers from hell one and all!

Bat Out of Hell is at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre until February 22. Click here for times, tickets and more.

*****

Review by Euan Rose,

Euan Rose Reviews.