Musical 'Bat Out of Hell,' Directed by Jay Scheib '02, Released to Rave Reviews

Bat Out of Hell, the musical based on the Meat Loaf album featuring songs by Jim Steinman and directed by alumnus Jay Scheib '02, debuted in New York to rave reviews last week. The musical is showing Off-Broadway at New York City Center and will run through September 8, 2019. The Bat Out of Hell musical made its official debut at the Manchester Opera House in the winter of 2017, then played in London and Toronto over the next two years. Scheib is quoted saying he was interested in Bat Out of Hell specifically because of its reputation as an unstageable work. “I’ve inherited a lot of impossible projects in my career, so that part made a lot of sense to me.”

“When’s the last time it felt as if an entire theater were about to levitate? The blissful overdrive of Jay Scheib’s production can affect even a relative outlier — Bat Out of Hell is all but blasting an adoring audience out of their seats.”—Matt Wolf, The New York Times

“His (Scheib's) brand of theater always seems to be ahead of everybody else.”—Tom Murrin, PAPERMAG

Internationally known for genre-defying works of daring physicality and the integration of new (and used) technologies in live performance, Scheib’s current productions include the West End musical Bat Out of Hell after the album by Jim Steinman at the London Coliseum/English National Opera and a new opera based on Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona, which was produced by Beth Morrison Projects and premiered at National Sawdust in New York followed by performances at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston and in 2017 with LA Opera at RedCat. Scheib's recent mashup of Heiner Goebbels' Surrogate Cities with Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung played to rave reviews at the Wuppertal Opera House in Germany. He received his MFA from Columbia University.