The musical of the cult black
comedy horror-suspense film Heathers is more
wicked fun than you expect it to be, even more than it has any right to be, if
musical theatre history is any barometer. Usually the musicals based on these
B-movies (with the notable exception of Little Shop of Horrors, which
started the trend) are inferior adaptations that default to adding camp; but
adapters Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe (who
wrote book, music and lyrics in tandem) have known enough to let the camp of Daniel
Waters’ original screenplay speak for itself, and play the story out for real
stakes.
Real
stakes, I hasten to add, are not humorless stakes—dialogue, lyrics and
even music are a witty, tasty evocation of Midwestern high school life (and the
pop music that would inform its vocabulary) of 1989. Without spoiling too much
for those who may not know the film going in (and I didn’t), it tells the tale
of Veronica Sawyer (Barrett Wilbert Weed), a girl teen who wants
acceptance into the inner-circle of the ultra-hip, the controlling and opinion-making
Heathers…which she gets…but discovers the personal cost is too high. And then
discovers that the cost of getting out is even higher.
One
of the earliest signs that you’re in good hands with the creative team
(including director Andy Fickman) is that in the wake of an
assured, unambiguous set of opening images, with narrative and music kicking in
to set the tone quickly, the audience—that part of them hip to the
film—cheers as each of the main characters is introduced. Not just out of
recognition; but out of some collectively sensed gestalt that the
iconography is right, that the beloved property is going to be
well-represented. Given the nature of Heathers that’s a
response no other musical is ever likely to have…but in its self-defined
context, it’s major. And the show then proceeds to live up to it.
Excellently
cast (Ryan McCartan, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Elle
McLemore, Alice Lee, Katie Ladner, Evan
Todd and Jon Eidson all deserve mention) and
designed to within an inch of its life, Heathers, though
off-Broadway, is the Broadway-scale sleeper of the season, and very possibly
the best musical of the season too.
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