In 2004, the off-kilter American rock musical Bat Boy received its UK premiere at what was then called West Yorkshire Playhouse. A West End transfer seemed obvious and so it came to pass.
The same fate is unlikely for Lizard Boy, another US musical about a winged creature, which is likable, amusingly diverting, even sweet, but takes itself too seriously for a story which asks huge leaps of imagination from its audience.
Justin Huertas plays Trevor who is cursed by scales on his body, a souvenir from a dragon attack two decades earlier in a Seattle playground when he was a child. While the plot is wildly original, many of the songs are as derivative as the jokes which you can spot coming as easily as you might a dragon in the skies above Manchester.
Fans of the easy listening style of Jack Johnson will be musically satisfied, and as for the gags: when Trevor puts on his Grindr profile that he’s “looking, for now”, it is misinterpreted by a sexually revved up Cary that he is “looking for now”. It is easy to imagine Friends creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane putting Chandler in that exact situation.
None of this is to say Lizard Boy isn’t worthy of an audience, which it will surely find when it heads to Edinburgh next month. Inventively staged by Brandon Ivie, the hour-long musical with a book, music and lyrics by Huertas has something to say about self-love and acceptance, and particularly about finding love today as a gay person of colour. (Lizard Boy’s only previous sexual experience was with a man who found his skin repulsive. It’s relevant that Lizard Boy’s scales are imagined, not physically represented on stage).
The cast of three, completed by Kirsten DeLohr Helland as Siren and William A Williams as Cary, are each charming in their own ways, none more so than Huertas.
At Hope Mill theatre, Manchester, until 27 July. Then at the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh, 3-28 August.
