West End Bat Out of Hell Star Christina Bennington on Finding Her 'Full-Throttle Rock Belt' for the Jim Steinman Musical

Bat Out of Hell, the rock and roll stage extravaganza drawn from songwriter Jim Steinman and the iconic Meat Loaf album of the same name, has returned to London, this time to the Dominion Theatre and with its original leads, Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington, along for the adrenaline-fueled ride. The Belfast-born Bennington’s credits include Show Boat in the West End and Sweeney Todd out of town, but it’s fair to say that none of her stage roles to date has been as vocally demanding as the teenage Raven, who falls hard for Polec’s frequently bare-chested Strat. The warmly engaging Bennington held forth on the topic of stamina, and more, in a recent afternoon chat prior to the April 19 re-opening of the show in its new home.

What do you make of the character of Raven, now that you’ve been living with her on both sides of the Atlantic and in two London theaters?
What’s interesting with Raven is that she can come across at the beginning as a moody teenager who may look innocent and sheltered. In fact, she has an inner life and an inner darkness and is searching for someone who will understand her.

In that case, what does she respond to in the perpetual rebel, Strat?
I think she sees in Strat a kindred spirit: someone who will challenge her and push her. She becomes quite sexually confident, which has probably been there the whole time, but I think she finally finds someone on her wavelength. She’s not been on the same plane as anyone else until she meets Strat—and I guess the same goes for him as well.

Does this feel like a therapeutic production to be part of given the extremes required every night?
What’s wonderful is about the show is that you’re exploring every emotion each night to the nth degree. The music in itself is cathartic, so you almost feel like you’re channeling something bigger than yourself.

Do you connect with the primal feelings on display?
Oh, yes! I remember when I was a teenager feeling as if first love was the most intense thing on the planet. The main focus that we want to get across is that thing about the love story between Raven and Strat being life and death. It’s ecstasy or depression—all or nothing—and the message comes from the lyrics, so all you can do is commit and give it one hundred million percent!

Your co-star [Andrew Polec] gets several shows a week off, but aren’t you doing all eight?
I am! I guess [Andrew’s] vocal track is a different story and that he needs that time to recuperate vocally. It is incredibly intense giving that much vocal and emotional energy eight times a week. With music on this scale, you can’t try to mark it or give it half your attention.

So, how are you staying the course?
This might not be very rock and roll but I do a lot of Pilates. I have to go back to making sure I’m in the correct alignment and that I’m building the muscles because I roll around the stage quite a lot. I’m a vegan, too, which I think has to do with making sure I have enough energy; what you can’t do is go out there without enough in the tank, and that goes for every member of the cast.

Did you know from the outset that you and Andrew would click, given that your stage chemistry is so important?
Honestly, from the day we met I think we knew it was going to work. We have a very similar energy as people and are very open in how we work, and we know how to play onstage and what our boundaries are. He’s very inspirational every night, which raises the level of my performance.

Do you need music before each performance to get in the zone?
[Laughs.] That’s actually my pre-show ritual: it’s extremely loud in my dressing room! I play music I think Raven would listen to just to get myself mentally prepared.

What's on your playlist?
Stuff like [English rock duo] Royal Blood, which is a band I think Raven would like, and also [Welsh folk band] Estron: those are the most recent ones.

Were you a Meat Loaf devotee growing up in Northern Ireland?
They were one of the many things that my dad would play in the car, but it’s so different coming to interpret them as an adult: I don’t think I anticipated even one-tenth of the scale of what this project turned out to be.

In what respect?
The world of Obsidian [the show’s post-apocalyptic setting] is not like any set I’ve seen before: you can climb everything! Then there’s the Wagnerian scale of the music—that lush wall of sound that is so Jim Steinman! —and the size of the cast and even the fan base and the level and the passion and the love that come from people who have loved this music for over 40 years.

Are you surprised, given roles that have included Magnolia in Show Boat, to have landed this role?
I’d always seen the trajectory of my career being more along the lines of a classical legit soprano doing those sorts of musical theater roles, so it’s been exciting as well as daunting and terrifying to find something that has brought out a whole other side to me. When the audition came through for what they were calling “the Meat Loaf musical,” I remember saying to my agent, “Are you sure? This is so out of my vocal comfort.” It became about finding a voice I’d never explored: a full-throttle rock belt.

Isn’t that the loveliest feeling, when people just trust that you can do it?
I was told that they were looking for someone who looks like a soprano but doesn’t sing like one, which was the odd niche I fit into at the time. But there’s no way anyone would have looked at my CV and said, “This proves she can sing a rock musical eight times a week”; they just had faith that I could do it!

What did your parents think at the time you sealed the deal to play Raven?
I don’t think they had any idea how big this was going to be, but then we didn’t have any idea either. Everything about this show has taken on a whole other dimension that none of us could ever have guessed, and it's not over yet.