Taylor Trensch

Bat Boy: The Musical

November 6, 2025

Beneath the camp and chaos, 'Bat Boy" remains what it always was: a parable with a pulse. O’Keefe’s rock-opera score jabs with wit but bleeds sincerity; his lyrics cut deep with irony and compassion. The story still howls against hypocrisy—the intolerance of difference, the fear of the Other, the absurd theatre of morality that masquerades as virtue. "Bat Boy" feels less like a musical and more like a communal exorcism of repression, guilt, and joy. In the capable, chaotic hands of this remarkable company, it doesn’t just sing—it soars, claws, and howls. To want to belong has rarely felt this thrilling. What emerges, through all the shrieks and laughter, is something profoundly moving: a hymn to belonging, a love letter to strangeness, a primal scream for empathy. [more]

Floyd Collins

April 29, 2025

Unfortunately, while the carnival atmosphere in the field above the cave increases, the musical is mostly a waiting game: if and when Floyd Collins will be brought up from the deteriorating cave. The emotions that you would expect as time begins to run out as passageways become either waterlogged or impassible are not in evidence except for Floyd’s father who is more concerned with finances that his son’s life. Floyd himself is often depicted as delirious or depressed so that we don’t get much of an arc of his emotions. [more]

The Seven Year Disappear

February 29, 2024

While "The Seven Year Disappear" may challenge and confuse many theatergoers, people used to performance art may get the in-jokes. Jordan Seavey whose play "Homos, or Everyone in America" was seen in 2016 in the Labyrinth Theater Company at the Bank Street Theater is a sophisticated, seasoned playwright and he and director Scott Elliott make no concessions to their audience. "The Seven Year Disappear" may be most appreciated by devotees of experimental theater but it does make one hungry for Seavey’s next play. [more]

Broadway Close Up: William Finn

October 29, 2015

Two veterans of the most recent revival of On the Town were splendid interpreters of Finn’s songs. First, Stephen DeRosa conjured a second-rate out-of-town production of "March of the Falsettos" populated by egos and amateurs. He sang “The Baseball Game” brilliantly-and schizophrenically—taking on each character of this bitingly satirical song. Later he sang the scathing, sexually explicit “Republicans” in which a liberal gets even with a Republican in an unprintable way. Then his colleague Alysha Umphress sang a rousing “Set Those Sails” ("In Trousers") and “Change” ("A New Brain"), both songs dealing differently with moving on. Ms. Umphress’s “Song of the Full Refrigerator,” about the temptations of food—“eat first and get depressed later”—was scarily right on the money. [more]