‘Heathers The Musical’ is ‘so very’ brilliant

SUGAR & SPICE & NOT AT ALL NICE: The ‘Heathers’ girls. Photo: Chad Batka

By Scott Harrah

The shoulder-padded original teenage “Mean Girls” from the 1988 cult classic Heathers are back in an irreverent Off-Broadway musical adaptation. Anyone familiar with that film, with Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, may not think its darkly humorous themes of teenage peer pressure and murder/suicide would translate into gleeful musical comedy, in light of all the real-life tragedies that made news in the past two decades.  The fact that creators Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy somehow pull off such grim subject matter in this day and age makes the show particularly noteworthy and proves that the original Heathers wasn’t simply avant-garde or “ahead of its time.”  It was a literal omen of things to come in the 1990s and 2000s.

Yet here it is as a musical.  However, don’t think this is another mindless stage adaptation of fluffy Hollywood cotton candy like Bring It On, with silly songs and music-video-style choreography.   Olivier Award winner Mr. O’Keefe was nominated for a Tony Award in 2007 for the score of Legally Blonde: The Musical, an adaptation of a film with a far more palatable plot.  Mr. O’Keefe and Emmy Award winner Kevin Murphy (“Desperate Housewives”) have written a fast-paced, entertaining show that covers all the unpleasant twists and turns of the movie, showing just how cruel and vicious high-school students can be to anyone who doesn’t conform.

Mr. O’Keefe and Mr. Murphy have adapted a movie that bared all the psychological trauma of adolescent Americans, long before anti-bullying campaigns and gay-straight alliances, when teachers looked the other way as kids bandied about such words as “faggot”.  All the nefarious elements of 1980s teenage life exposed in the movie are intact here.

Barrett Wilbert Weed marvelously portrays Veronica, an outcast in an Ohio high school.  When her handwriting forgery skills prove to be valuable, Veronica is invited to join the most popular clique in school, the Heathers (three catty, croquet-playing, blazer-wearing airheads, all of whom have the same first name), with Heather Chandler (Jessica Keenan Wynn) as the leader.

Things heat up when Veronica meets the enigmatic sociopath Jason “J.D”. Reed (a wonderfully sinister Ryan McCartan).  One of the most outstanding numbers is J.D.’s “Freeze Your Brain,” a paean to Slurpees and Corn Nuts that sends up these lowbrow staples of Americana.  However, it is the plot-propelling songs like “Dead Girl Walking” that truly shine.  Without giving too much storyline away, Heathers is essentially a tale of murder hiding behind the guise of teenage suicide, particularly the killing of Heather Chandler (portrayed beautifully with bitchy brilliance by Jessica Keenan Wynn) by making her unwittingly chug down household drain cleaner, and how the perpetrators try to get away with this and other grisly acts.  The twist for the stage, however, is that Heather Chandler is reborn as a posthumous, ghostly presence throughout the remainder of the show, adding the vivacity necessary to bring color to this “so very” jet-black saga.

In the second act, it is no easy task to reconstruct vital plot elements of the film like the murder of two jocks, Kurt Kelly (Evan Todd) and Ram Sweeney (Jon Edison), framed as gay, and the pro-gay funeral that follows.  Although there’s quite a lot of cheap humor in the song “I Love My Dead Gay Son”, sung by the boys’ fathers (Anthony Crivello and Daniel Cooney), it is still a showstopper.

Director Andy Fickman extracts many outstanding performances from the cast.  The energetic choreography by Marguerite Derricks gives levity to the sometimes macabre and disagreeable subject matter. As many have noted, Heathers was the first movie about juvenile delinquents with a female protagonist.  It was also a movie about high school that depicted reality without any cloying sentimentality, unlike the John Hughes “Brat Pack” teen vehicles of the era. Rather than portraying female aggression as camp (like so many B movies before it), Heathers was the first to shed light on how teenage girls need more than just “fitting in” or getting a makeover to be happy.

Fortunately for true Heathers aficionados, all the great lines from “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” to “Dear Diary, my teen angst bullshit has a body count” to “f**k me with a chainsaw” are included.  The famous question “Are we going to prom or hell?” is even turned into a rousing opening song for act two, “Prom or Hell?”

A musical based on a movie about kids killing other kids could come across as tasteless or inappropriate in 2014. The movie might not even get made today, but the truly remarkable thing is how everything “so very” works as a musical comedy. Be it on or off Broadway, Heathers is the best musical of the season.

SING OUT, SISTERS: The cast of ‘Heathers The Musical.’ Photo: Chad Batka

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 31, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on March 29, 2014