Book, Music & Lyrics: Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe
Director: Andy Fickman
Back in 1989, Heathers (The Movie) skewered the aspirations of the decade – money, popularity, beauty, fame – with a fiendishly dark sense of humour embodied so perfectly by its smouldering stars, Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. Heathers: The Musical gives us an opportunity to time warp (sorry, wrong musical) back to that era and experience the world of the movie again, complete with shoulder pads, big hair and casual eating disorder jokes, but this time with added dancing and breaking into song. The musical has been gathering pace since 2014 and if the number of audience members cosplaying as Heathers at this exhilarating performance is anything to go by, it may well become a perennial favourite.
Before the curtain opens, we are greeted by the imposing crest of Westerberg High School, which we soon discover is a hellscape of bullying and impossible beauty standards. It’s ruled over by clueless teachers, jocks and the Heathers, a tyrannical clique of popular girls who make life impossible for anyone who isn’t as attractive and rich as them. They decide to enlist misfit Veronica Sawyer and as she gets dragged into their spiteful upper class lifestyle (complete with matching colour-coordinated outfit), she abandons her best friend Martha ‘Dumptruck’. When she meets the dreamy, trenchcoated J.D., Veronica gets further swept down a path of death and destruction. It’s a fast-paced Shakespearean plot that tackles some tricky topics along the way. Themes of suicide, sexual assault and bullying weave blithely through the songs and prickly dialogue in a way that feels like it’s opening a wider conversation rather than being merely flippant.
There are spectacular set pieces with the whole school dancing across the stage brandishing lunch trays or fighting en-masse in slow motion. Stand-out number Candy Store has an infectious Little Shop of Horrors groove to it that gets the audience dancing in their chairs and whooping early on in proceedings. The songs are rousing and joyful but always ready to pivot into a moment of teenage emotional fragility. Veronica’s need to be accepted, for instance, is articulated touchingly in the opening Beautiful. But the most moving solo in the show, Kindergarten Boyfriend, comes from Kingsley Morton as Martha ‘Dumptruck’ bearing her heart and reminiscing about more innocent pre-adolescent times.
Sometimes the songs themselves don’t aid the narrative as much as they could. Freeze Your Brain is J.D.’s ode to going to a 7/11 and drinking slurpees to get brain freeze, and it’s hard to say what meaning this has. It also stalls the romance in what is one of J.D. and Veronica’s first scenes together. However, the chemistry between the leads Jenna Innes and Jacob Fowler quickly ramps up and from there on they’re a suitably lovestruck focal point to the show. Unless we find a way to drag the young Winona and Christian back from the eighties and teach them how to sing in a Broadway style, it’s difficult to imagine better performers for these parts.
In fact, all the performances in this production are immaculate. The singing is consistently strong, clear and expressive, and the band are spot on in their punchy, driving accompaniment. The supporting characters, like the aforementioned Martha, frequently steal scenes. As well as dunderhead jocks Kurt (Alex Woodward) and Ram (Morgan Jackson) with their endearingly homoerotic toxic masculinity; and Ms. Fleming (Katie Paine), the ‘hippie’ teacher, who shines in a second half solo, cheekily interacts with someone in the front row of the theatre, whilst leading the school’s anti-suicide drive.
There’s a perverse glee to be taken in the vileness of the characters, especially the “mythic bitch” Heather Chandler, played with regal glamour by Verity Thompson. From the moment the Heathers strut onto the stage it’s difficult to not feel slightly complicit in their popularity. We hate them, we want to be them. It’s just the kind of delicious type of escapism a musical should be serving up. In these 17-year-olds’ free use of homophobic, misogynistic language, it’s a return to a pre-woke high school context that feels cathartic. The campness of it all prevents any joke ever feeling too close to the bone. You’re safe in the knowledge that if any real harm is caused, it will be dealt with swiftly by the tidy happy-ending morality of the world of musicals.
Runs until 18 March 2023
