Results are in: The winner of the high school Musical Madness competition is ...
In the end, it was bat over bard.
“Bat Boy: The Musical” outlasted musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “Twelfth Night” to win the championship of The Journal News/lohud Musical Madness Tournament.
The final vote was close, with the outnumbered “Bat Boy” taking 53% of votes cast in the championship matchup, with a margin of just 111 votes.
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A season beckons: High school musicals are back
How Musical Madness worked
To create our bracket tournament — similar to the NCAA's (which is settled tonight), but with showtunes instead of jumpshots — we took the list of all the musicals appearing on high school stages across the Lower Hudson Valley this season. No “Sound of Music,” no "Cats," no “The Producers”; they weren’t staged by any high school we’d heard from in Rockland, Westchester or Putnam counties this season.
We seeded the musicals in four regions: Rodgers, Miranda, Menken and Sondheim. The idea was to get people talking about the musicals, not about the schools that were producing them. And it worked like a charm, with Instagram stories brimming with schools pushing their particular productions and people going to see the shows, using the searchable musicals database on lohud.com.
In all, more than 64,000 votes were cast from the Feb. 21 play-in matchups through last week’s championship. (There are still a dozen musicals remaining in the season, from “Jersey Boys” at Stepinac to “The Little Mermaid” in Mount Vernon.)
The 'Bat' is all that
Today, on the day when that other bracket names its men’s basketball champion, ours is clear: a little blue guy with a wicked overbite and pointy ears.
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“Bat Boy” is a wild and campy musical inspired by a wacky story in the Weekly World News tabloid. It’s about Edgar, a half-boy-half-bat “found” in a West Virginia cave. When he is discovered and brought to the town of Hope Falls, he sets off a wave of fear and hysteria.
But the little guy is a quick study, trading screeches for proper English with a British accent. Before long, he has found a home and love. Still, this being a quirky musical with B-movie sensibilities, Happily Ever After isn’t in the cards for Edgar.
How ‘Bat Boy’ made the bracket
“Bat Boy” arrived in our bracket because Pelham Memorial High School staged it. Tom Beck, who co-directed the musical with Neil Schleifer, said the rarely done musical was met with hesitation at first.
“It’s totally weird, but it has a heart to it, as well, which is what I liked about it,” Beck said.
It also came with a steep learning curve for Pelham students who didn’t really understand tabloid journalism and the kind of campy movies the musical is based on. Part of the research included Beck and Schleifer showing the cast old B-movies.
“The kids were howling, like: ‘This is so over the top,’” Beck said. “They loved it.”
That education, the backdrop to “Bat Boy,” helped create the world of the musical on the tiny Pelham stage.
The road to the championship
The Musical Madness bracket began with 37 musicals in 36 slots.
"Love's Labour's Lost" and "Twelfth Night" — two other rarely performed musicals — were paired in one slot to keep the bracket from expanding to teams beyond those on local stages. New Rochelle staged “Love’s Labour’s Lost”; Clarkstown North staged “Twelfth Night.”
To reach the final, “Love’s Labour’s”/“Twelfth Night” took out “The Addams Family” in the play-in tournament, then topped “Into the Woods,” “Anastasia” “The Little Mermaid” and "9 to 5."
"Bat Boy" ran through similar musical royalty. It took out “Grease!” in the play-in game and then went on to beat “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” “Cinderella,” “The Wedding Singer” and "Matilda."
When told their musical had run the table and won the bracket tournament, Schleifer and Beck, the co-directors, emailed: "We loved the Musical Madness bracket. Rather than a competition, this was a celebration. We felt it promoted musicals for all those whose 'sport' is theater and tip our hats to all the schools who brought exceptional musical theater throughout the county."
Adjustments to the script
“Bat Boy” has a book by Keyth Farley and Brian Flemming and music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe, a 1989 graduate from Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua. O’Keefe also wrote the music for “Legally Blonde” and “Heathers.”
(Fun fact: O’Keefe’s brother, Dan, wrote the Festivus episode for “Seinfeld,” basing it on the made-up family holiday created by his father, author Daniel O’Keefe.)
To stage “Bat Boy” in Pelham required changes from the original off-Broadway script, which included one scene in particular that wouldn’t play on a high school stage.
Beck and Schleifer reached out to Farley, who gave permission for changes, which is something most playwrights rarely allow.
“They were great,” Beck said. “I think they were so happy someone was doing it.”
And now Edgar, who was played at Pelham by sophomore Liam Ginsburg, is happily atop our bracket.
This article originally appeared on New York State Team: lohud high school Musical Madness bracket contest winner is 'Bat Boy'
