Do not go to Bat Boy: The Musical. 

Do not go to Bat Boy: The Musical if you hate fun. If you hate camp, hate massive talent and hate supporting local theater. If you do not want to fall in love with the titular Bat Boy, and find yourself succumbing to the pleasures of kitsch, camp, sexuality, blood, guts and B-movies just as Brad Majors and Janet Weiss once did in Rocky Horror, do not go to Bat Boy: The Musical. The team who has put it together does not want you to go, and frankly, neither does this reviewer. 

If this sounds like a risk you’d like to take, you have to be all in. If you can do that, flap your dirty little wings and fly down to the Opal Center in Cottage Grove for its last weekend, Nov. 5 through Nov. 7. If you’re coming from Eugene, take the route with the creepy backroads to fully immerse yourself in the darkness. 

The play is loosely inspired by a 1992 collection of articles in your typical supermarket tabloid fluff magazine, Weekly World News. The paper published a hoax about a half-bat, half-boy mutant who was constantly escaping from government science labs. In 1997, Bat Boy: The Musical was born Off Broadway and had a stint in London’s West End.

Now, Opal Theater has it. Directed by Molly McCarthy, the show opens with a few up-to-no-good small town kids exploring a cave past their bedtime. They encounter the hideous beast and chaos ensues. 

Then, the opening number begins — the full ensemble takes the stage, stone-faced and dressed in all black. The expositional introduction song devolves into corny, arm-dancing, in-unision choreography, as they sing suggestive phrases such as “love me, Bat Boy,” “touch me, Bat Boy” and “hold me, Bat Boy,” while gyrating and doing other provocative movements — keeping the same stoic facial expressions the whole time.

It was at that moment when I started cackling my head off (and didn’t stop until intermission), but I had to take a moment to consider if I was laughing at or with the musical. An observer would say that this show is rough so far, à la, Steve Buscemi “hello, fellow kids,” style. But it was Meredith Taylor’s powerhouse vocals that tipped me off that this show was something different, something more intentional.

Bat Boy gets taken out of the cave and into the small town, where he is placed with your typical American family. The second song is a rapid-fire duet between Meredith (Rene Ragan) and Shelley Parker (Clare Brennan). Meredith is happy to take Bat Boy in. Her daughter Shelley is not. The mechanics of the song allow Brennan and Ragan to feed off each other’s talent to encapsulate the ever-complicated mother-daughter relationship, and I practically exploded with joy when I realized the layered masterpiece I was witnessing.

After that, there is almost no more summary I can give, because the play is a rollercoaster and the twists and turns start quickly. What I can say is this show has it all, but its definition of “all” is not the same as yours and mine. It explores family dynamics, religious guilt, love and sense of place. Bat Boy can be hurt too. 

There is also a decapitated cow and an orgy involving hand puppets.

Speaking of props and staging, McCarthy pulls out all the stops. There is a scene when the true villain is revealed, and McCarthy executes a choice that is nothing less than haunting. She creates a similar feeling during the song “Comfort and Joy,” where she twists the phrase into a completely opposite meaning, fully immersing the room and incorporating the entire cast. 

The production’s true stand out was Bat Boy himself (Max Chan Weiher), who stole the show. For most of the play, I wondered if he was a professional, and was floored to learn this is his first non-ensemble role in a musical. Weiher brings his whole body and soul to the part of a half-bat half-boy. The way he skitters around the stage like a rabid animal, hangs upside down like a vampire, communicates in bat-tongues and yearns like a human is truly hypnotizing. Everything else he does is show-stopping. Bat Boy wants to be loved. Weiher has a future in acting.

Bat Boy is most definitely a metaphor for being othered — how can you incorporate someone into society who doesn’t have a place? But if you want to believe that you are entering a world where Bat Boy navigates the challenges of living with an average family, then go ahead. It’s a blast. This is a community theater production, but as far as the staging, standout talents and the overall sense of entertainment it evokes, it stands with top professional theater. 

Bat Boy: The Musical is 8 pm Thursday, Nov. 5 through Saturday Nov. 7 at Opal Center for Arts & Education, 513 East Main Street, Cottage Grove. Tickets are $25 and available at OpalCenterCg.org.