WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Dominion Theatre
WHEN: 6/4, press night 19/4, runs to 28/7/18
We’d do anything for our love of musical theatre but, given we’re no great fans of Meatloaf, would we do that – and enjoy new Jim Steinman musical Bat Out Of Hell?
- Read on for reasons including how bats fly over the audience in this new musical
Check your preconceptions at the door because, apart from the score, the book is not going to go the way that you think.
We’ve been to three recent shows at this venue (The Bodyguard, Elf and War Of The Worlds scored no more than a three-and-a-half star review) and this is the first time we’ve seen something that could come close to matching the 12-year run enjoyed by Queen musical We Will Rock You at this venue.
The story makes much more sense than that did: our hero Strat (Polec in great rock voice) is part of tribe the Lost who are doomed to be 18-years-old forever and he falls in love with Raven (Christina Bennington, looking like Lorde with a voice the equal of Polec’s) whose father is hot dictator Falco (Rob Fowler, variously appearing for spurious reasons topless and in pink Y-fronts *correction* pants only).
He doesn’t want them to fall in love and finds an unlikely ally in Strat’s gay BFF Tink. So far so Peter Pan meets Romeo and Juliet in a Mad Max landscape.
Steinman’s overblown rock songs actually work well in a musical theatre setting and suit the outrageous futuristic intra-generational storyline. No expense has been spared with the staging which features amongst other things a car driving into the orchestra pit injuring several musicians, bats flying over the audience and an impressive underwater visual trick.
We’d forgotten how good a song Dead Ringer For Love was, loved that this is a show bringing in a different kind of crowd to a West End musical and had a much more fun time here than we thought we would.
monstagigz 
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