It has spent 16 winters on its own. Now a playwright has turned one bat´s sad story into a gay parable full of deceit and longingInspiration is often found in unexpected places and, last summer, Irish playwright Barry McStay discovered it while flicking through a Guardian Long Read I wrote about a lonely bat. The true tale of Britain´s only greater mouse-eared bat, which spent 16 winters hibernating alone in a disused railway tunnel in Sussex, inspired McStay to write Vespertilio, a new play that opens this week in another disused railway tunnel, this one beneath Waterloo station in London.Vespertilio begins with a devoted conservationist guarding this rare bat. But what follows is fiction: a young homeless runaway, Josh, seeks shelter in the tunnel, and meets Alan, the middle-aged bat-lover. So begins a fraught relationship between two very different men. Through the poignant symbol of the lone bat, McStay´s two-hander explores loneliness within the gay community, as a story of love, deceit and possibly redemption unfolds in the tunnel. Continue reading...
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