Heathers: The Musical at Theatre Royal Haymarket review – one of the best new musicals in years
It’s almost 30 years since every teenage girl fell in love with Christian Slater in pitch-black highschool comedy Heathers. Director Michael Lehmann picked up a shelfful of awards for his deliciously twisted tale of a student killing off his cooler-than-thou classmates, and it continues to spawn a legion of imitators.
Given the film’s cult status – not to mention the potential for outrageous musical numbers – it was no surprise when it was adapted for the stage by Laurence O’Keefe, whose credits include the wildly popular Legally Blonde: The Musical.
Following successful runs in New York, LA and London’s The Other Palace Theatre, Heathers finally gets the west-end transfer it so richly deserves. And even amid the wealth of brilliant musicals London has hosted over the last few years, Heathers shines. It’s like the best parts of Glee smashed together with the sassy vindictiveness of Mean Girls, but with more murder.
What the musical version loses in characterisation, it gains in sheer joyful exuberance. O’Keefe is a pro, and tunes like Seventeen are genuine earworms that will bore their way through your brain for days.
The casting of YouTuber extraordinaire Carrie Hope Fletcher (651k subscribers and counting) is a masterstroke, bringing not only a leading lady with serious singing chops – she played Eponine in Les Miserables – but also pulling in a crowd who weren’t even born when the movie was released; groups of millennials in plaid tennis skirts were gathered outside the theatre on press night, taking selfies with the show banner in the background.
She’s ably supported by James Muscat as Jason ‘JD’ Dean, the murderous bad boy with a penchant for quoting Moby Dick and Baudelaire.
And while primary colours and knowing winks are the order of the day – the costumes look like they’ve been lifted from the window display of New Look – the production doesn’t shy away from searingly relevant themes, from bullying and sexual harassment, to depression and suicide. Only, you know, with catchy tunes.
Heathers is a blast, fully deserving to be mentioned alongside modern classics like The Little Shop of Horrors, Groundhog Day and American Psycho. Older audience members will revel in the cosy nostalgia, while I almost envy the One Direction generation who get to experience it for the first time.
After the show, you can head to the bar next door for a ‘Heathers, the cocktail’, where you can mingle with both 30-somethings in cable-knit jumpers and teenagers barely old enough to order a pint – such is the power of musical theatre to bring people together.