Bat Out Of Hell, Edinburgh Playhouse***: Jim Steinman songs still pack a punch

It made Meat Loaf into a star, spawned several sequels and a musical which has been re-imagined for 2025.

Three years on from its first visit to Scotland, this wasn’t just opening night in Edinburgh, it was night one of a UK tour that will keep them on the road until September. You sense Jim Steinman would have thoroughly approved of the sheer scale of the project. He never was one for anything under-stated. “Everything Louder Than everything Else” was one song title which summed up his gloriously over the top Wagnerian anthems which still chime with rockers of all ages, even the ones for whom headbanging has given way to gentle nods of the head for fear of sustaining an injury.

Excess all areas? Why not! When your song titles are longer than some boy band careers, and you have an ear for the punchiest riffs and catchiest hooks then your work is destined for the stage.

And Bat Out Of Hell is as rock as musicals get. Ramp up the energy, play it loud and pack in as many big - and I mean ‘BIG’ - Steinman songs as you can. I think I counted 20.

Much like Bohemian Rhapsody, the story is slightly bonkers, but no-one wastes too much time explaining it in any depth. Steinman/Meat Loaf aficionados will get the references to lost boys and golden girls, and the nod to their great, unique lyrics, but it’s kinda simple - boy/girl from the opposite side of the tracks meet, powerful dad disapproves and threatens to seal the tunnel where the rocker lives with his strange band of J.M. Barrie-esque mates who can never grow up. Think Peter Pan but in a leather jacket and holding a microphone stand like Freddie Mercury and you’re kinda there.

Quite why they’ll never grew older than 18 is a story for another musical - something to do with a chemical spill - but this one is rooted in Neverland, a project Steinman started before encountering Meat Loaf, and unleashing Bat Of Hell which pretty much preoccupied them for the next decade or two.

So back to the musical. Glenn Adamson returns as charismatic Strat, leader of The Lost, with Katie Tonkinson as Raven, the daughter of Falco (Rob Fowler) who is out to smash the gang and leave them in eternal damnation.

Sharon Sexton plays his disillusioned wife, Sloane, and there’s a huge cast of tribal members featuring Zahara (Georgia Bradshaw) Tink (Carla Bertran), Jagwire (Ryan Carter), Ledoux (Luke Street) and Valkyrie (Carly Burns) who all deliver some powerhouse vocals.

Adamson and Tonkinson absolutely nail their big numbers and play teasingly with the spoken intro to You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth - it becomes a nice running joke across both sets.

The title song is a great way to close part one, but the stand out was Paradise By The Dashboard Light brilliantly brought to life by Fowler and Sexton with a nice line in humour. They also delivered mightily on What Part of My Body Hurts the Most in the second half. Sexton also brings her character to life more than any other on the stage.

The second half is basically the very best of Steinman and Meat Loaf as the story is condensed into a few lines in between as many of their classics they can shoehorn in as time allows.

Bat Out Of Hell ain’t perfect - neither is Bohemian Rhapsody but it still packs them in - but we’re here for one thing only, and that’s the music. Forty-eight years since the album first dropped, the songs more than just resonate - they still pack a glorious punch. For those about rock, we salute you …

> Bat Out Of Hell is at the Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Saturday, January 11. Ticket details here