Bat Boy

Bat Boy: The Musical opens with three teenagers finding a feral, fanged child in a cave and dragging him back into town, where the local vet's family takes him in and sets about teaching him to speak, dress and behave. He learns fast. The town warms to him considerably more slowly.

Edgar, as they name him, turns out to be gentle, articulate and desperate to be liked. The cattle are dying and the town needs somebody to hold responsible. The vet has private reasons for wanting the boy gone. The daughter of the house falls for him, a complication the plot handles with more nerve than most musicals would risk. It is a horror comedy that takes its monster's feelings entirely seriously.

The book is by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming, with music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe, and the whole thing grew out of a tabloid story about a creature supposedly discovered underground. It premiered in 1997 and has since become a staple for companies after something loud, strange and difficult to categorise.

The score swings between gospel, rock, hillbilly pastiche and full-blown showtune, almost all of it played straight, which is exactly why the jokes land. Underneath the camp it is about the ordinary machinery of scapegoating: how fast a community settles on who is to blame, and how thin the line is between being welcomed and being tolerated.

It is for audiences who like their musicals odd, and for anyone who enjoys a show that commits without embarrassment to a ridiculous premise. Live, the tonal swerves are half the pleasure, because the room is never quite sure what it is allowed to laugh at.