This is one of those campy off-Broadway shows that secretly delights in its own awfulness: the theatrical equivalent of a movie like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Quite what it is doing on a West End stage, after a run at West Yorkshire Playhouse, is a mystery.
Based on a story that appeared in an American supermarket tabloid, it concerns a wild, pointy-eared bat-boy who is discovered in a West Virginian cave, nurtured by the town vet and his family, and regarded by the rest of the community as a source of evil.
At first, I thought we might be in for a satire on American society's capacity to demonise the outsider. But what we get is a musically undistinguished, lyrically trite rock-show, tricked out with vampirism, incest and gore.
Even a self-consciously weird musical like this requires a certain internal logic: something lacking from Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming's book, Laurence O'Keefe's lyrics, or Mark Wing-Davey's production.
Having celebrated his graduation with a vigorous, table-top dance, why does the hero turn into a leaden-footed klutz? And having established that the townsfolk are a band of vicious fundamentalists, why does the production ask us to clap along with a jaunty revivalist number?
Deven May as Bat Boy shows a startling capacity to hang upside down by his feet and has moments of Calibanesque pathos. Rebecca Vere as the vet's wife also deserves a better musical.
But this one doesn't seem to know whether it is attacking American small-town conformism or madness. Either way, it is one of those cultish New York shows that should quickly be returned to sender.
· Until October 30. Box office: 020-7379 5399
