Zahara wakes up Raven, having taken a pint of blood from the latter, and takes her away while her parents are sleeping, being intentionally cryptic about where they are headed. Once they are out of the room, Tink appears and destroys the pillows on Raven’s bed in a fit of rage.

Strat is, unsurprisingly, still alive. Tink has been taking care of him, and Zahara brings Raven to him. Tink and Raven have some words. And then Zahara drives an unwilling Tink out of the scene, leaving the two lovers to sing a duet version of “For Crying Out Loud.”

The arrangement is again quite similar to the original. The strings are removed from the second verse. Some of the horns are also removed before the second chorus. The song is also, like so many in this musical, truncated, essentially cutting out the bridge and the third chorus.

I can’t really explain what it is, but there’s something more propulsive and rhythmic about the piano and the melody early in the song than the more balladic original. And then the guitar and rhythm section join in earlier than in Meat Loaf’s recording. The overall effect is a bit more up-tempo feeling of a song, even though I don’t think it’s actually faster. It’s definitely recognizable as the same song–indeed, its changes are few–but the character of the song is very different. This is somehow a happier, more fun version.

Both Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington sing the song quite well. If I had never heard Meat Loaf sing this song, I would have no complaints about them. However, I still think this song is Meat Loaf’s best vocal performance on Bat out of Hell if not of his career, and I miss his presence on this song. They can hit all of the notes and they sound emotionally well-invested. But Meat Loaf’s volume control and emotional depth from the original is just impossible to ask of anyone else.

This part of the musical is actually very difficult to follow on the cast album. It feels like a strange, nonsensical whipping about of moods and ideas as we bounce from “In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher Is King” to “Heaven Can Wait” to “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are” to this one, but it turns out that’s because it’s really the first time in the show that song-free scenes are necessary to follow the action. In these few songs, it is setting up what is story-wise the final act of the play, with Raven, Strat and the Lost really all aligning themselves against Falco for a final confrontation with Tink and Sloane really caught between. The next couple of scenes will see the two caught in the middle having to declare their loyalties before that confrontation.