Theatre from my Head: 07/03/2010

So yet again the other day LibraryGirl and I were chatting and we were talking about music and Meatloaf came up. We got onto the subject of how come there is no Meatloaf musical or if there is why hasn't it been put on in London? Well a quick google search showed that there isn't but there is a few articles and buzzes about it. Then suddenly a memory stirred of huge posters with a gothic looking Toya Wilcox on proclaiming that they had the music of Meatloaf in their musical, this was a piece put together and developed by Meatloaf impersonator Steve Steinman this was 'Vampire Rocks'. Vampires Rocks was a huge success when it debuted in 2006 as a Concert combining music of artists like Meatloaf, Queen, Rainbow and many others. It was so successful that it had an arena tour of which there is a dvd available. It has since evolved into a mix between a concert and musical with a storyline weaving throughout the performance. It is currently on tour throughout the UK and...

CHEAP PLUG: its coming to Worthing at the Pavillion Theatre on Fri 5th of November, tickets now on sale at the Box Office contact 01903 206206.

Thats not all Steve Steinman has also developed a brand new Meatloaf based show with a 40 piece orchestra to perform the Bat Out of Hell album in all its Wagnerian Rock glory. So there are shows out there but the official Bat Out of Hell musical is nowhere to be seen.

Reports on a Meatloaf musical started really surfacing with some clout in 2006 when the court battle between Meatloaf and Jim Steinman, the original writer and collaborator of Bat Out of Hell 1 and 2, regarding Bat Out Of Hell 3 gave Steinman the rights to use the songs to make a musical based on the music.

Steinman had previously used the music, rewriting the lyrics, of some of his Meatloaf lyrics for his highly successful European musical Tanz Der Vampire. However when the show was being developed and modified for the Broadway Stage as 'Dance of The Vampire' it used more Meatloaf tunes and was taken out of Steinmans hands and put into the hands of an inexperienced team of designers and directors. I won't go into much detail, for that please go to this excellent article from the nytimes, but it didn't end well. Steinman was burned by Broadway and this has probably to a certain extent led to him wanting to keep things under his control. Steinman has in the past had great success as a composer, after all Bat out of Hell has sold over 43 million copies so far, but not only has he created his own Rock genre through his work with Meatloaf but he has written musicals such as 'Whistle Down the Wind' alongside Lord Lloyd Webber. So when Steinman announces he is going to be putting on a musical based around his best selling album, barring any complicated half baked storyline by Ben Elton (I am looking at you 'We Will Rock You), I obviously get very excited. In a blogpost from July 2006 Steinman wrote this:

Jim Steinman's BAT OUT OF HELL: LIVE ON STAGE", what I can say is, subject to final agreements, CHOREGRAHER is MARK DENDY, who to me is "best in the world now"; Costumes are by Eiko (Coppola's "DRACULA" and many CIRQUE shows); SET AND THEATRE DESIGN BY MARK FISHER (Cirque "KA","LOVE", WE WILL ROCK YOU, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd etc.His site is stufish.com;) ANIMATION by the great GERALD SCARFE ("THE WALL" on film & stage, true genius, please see his site, "GeraldScarfe.com"); LIGHTING by MARC BRICKMAN (Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel etc.). Im thrilled with this team! I'll announce more as it evolves.Direction is by WILSON MILAM (Tony award nominee for "THE LIEUTENNANT OF INNISHMORE", the first "splatter" stage show.)

Now reading the names involved excited me to the point of becoming obsessed with finding a definitive date and information regarding an opening or tour around the UK. I signed up to the official website which has nothing on it apart from a sign up form and I checked out Steinman's official website. I found nothing but further news releases. In 2008 there was article in Playbill in which Steinman claimed to be aiming for a 2008/2009 opening for the show in London, he also announced backing from Sony/BMG and that the set and lighting would be done by Industrial Light and Magic in their first ever stage design. This was later on followed by reports from the Mirror Newspaper that BBC presenter, X Factor Finalist and Classical singer Rhydian was to be cast in the musical. Then there was a very strange article, which I found that adds to my perplexion as it makes me doubt the validity of his work and whether or not this project is ever happening. Taken from this page this is the statement.

The APOLLO VICTORIA is probably our theatre choice! We’ll be replacing WICKED there. Its a gr8 theatre in a gr8 location! (Our final “due diligence” concerns making sure there’s ROOM ENUF for sets, 3D visuals, parkour, motorcycles, massive dance pieces,gymnastics, etc. We WERE going to build our own theatre, but the big problem was NO ROOM IN LONDON AT ALL for it and we did want to start there! Since things Arent finalized, anything can change, but the possibility of major involvement & funding from SONG/BMG or WARNERS, artistic involvement of ILM in their FIRST stage venture, and Stephen Clarke all make me really stoked. As far as financing goes, all is ahead of schedule!

Now I am sorry but this statement made me seriously question whether this show is going to actually happen due to the fact that Steinman claims they will be replacing Wicked. Wicked is one of the biggest West End successes of the past 10 years and it still packs in a huge audience everynight, its box office appeal is obviously strong as you never really see cheap seats for the show. In fact according to wikipedia Wicked is booked through to the 30th of April 2011 and has a major cast change this month. So either Steinman was talking about something he knew nothing about, hoping to cause some publicity and get people talking then I don't know what he was thinking. Building their own theatre would have been a bad idea, London isn't Vegas and has too many historical theatres for there to be any new ones. If he is adamant about building a theatre though he has to wait for one in London to be knocked down as they are the current rules regarding theatre building in the capital. The show sounds like a massive undertaking with a real spectacle aspect to it and as such a normal theatre is not going to be good enough for this piece in this writers opinion. My advise to Steinman is that he should take his idea to the o2 and take up residency there for say 3-4 months. If Steve Steinman could get his tribute concert/musical to tour stadium dates and arenas and pack them out then there is no reason it wouldn't work at the o2. Of course at the end of the statement he talks about financing, now presuming the previous statement in playbill about Sony/BMG backing the project was right it could be that during the recession that they backed out as it was seen as too much of a loss at a time when everyone was worrying about the state of things to come. Some may say that Sony is such a huge force in the music industry it wouldn't come to that, well EMI is $3 billion in the hole so I think in this economy Sony would have no problem cutting costs by dropping live show developments. So going through the internet it seems nothing is happening and then this story cropped up:

Pixie Lott has revealed that she may soon be starring in a West End production of Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell musical.

Posted in November 2009 this seems to be the latest and last news of this musicals development. Pixie Lott is obviously someone who with name value will make more people come to see the show and I hope she does join the cast if and when this show gets made.

So what do I think? Will it happen? Well one day I am sure it will, at the moment nothing is coming from Steinmans camp regarding dates, venues etc. However Meatloaf is huge in Europe and an album which sells 43 million worldwide is going to have a built in audience for a show. What about the content though? Can it be made into a piece of theatre? Of course it can, the lyrics themselves are very good in that they tell a story as qouted from blogcritics.org:

That was beautiful, man. Genius. See..he was telling a story. But set to music. It works on two levels! And you had to sing it just like Meatloaf, as if you were on a high school stage in the midst of some overwrought musical about love and loss and umm...motorcycle accidents.

They don't much like the album in retrospect but they make a very good point, this music is very angst ridden and proper teenage rock and roll with a bit of sex thrown in. The lyrics are classic in that they are perfect signifiers for teenage rebellion, motorcycles, summer, the beach, hell and beautiful women. In fact some of these songs today could get a resurgence, Bat Out Of Hell itself is still a huge number but with its original spoken opening 'You took the Words Right Out Of My Mouth' could appeal to the Twifans who are everywhere nowadays. However there is one song on the album that is very theatrical and is in my mind an 8 and a half minute piece of musical theatre.

'Paradise by the Dashboard Light' is a mega song that has 3 parts that I see as 3 seperate acts. The first act is a couple reminiscing about their most significant dates when they were younger. They sing about how 'hot' their love was and 'tender' and full of hope. Then in act two we go to the action heating up back in the past where they start getting physical in their relationship, the singing ends and a funky bass line kicks in with hushed moans playing underneath a baseball commentator who is commentating on a game but is actually making innuendo to the action between the boy and girl. The girl then issues an ultimatum to the boy that he promises to marry her and be with her forever or she will not take their physical relationship any further. He begs for time but she hounds him and he in a fit of lust and frustration agrees to her demands. In act 3 the boy, now a man regrets his choice and declares he is praying for the end of time so his promise is fulfilled. The girl agrees with him and joins in with his cries of praying for the relationship to end. The song finishes with them fading out as they focus on how good everything was between them before they got together physically and they foolishly entered into their destructive relationship. In my mind its like a Romantic tragedy and a powerful piece of musical theatre. I can imagine someone performing this as a duet in a musical revue but with a deeper context. This sort of writing proves that Steinmans work would work on stage. I just hope he does it sooner rather than later.