Will Callan and Nic Myers in Cruel Intentions at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London and Touring. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical was reviewed at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London where it continues until 1 March 2025. The tour continues until 28 June 2025.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
This superior jukebox musical, much admired at London’s The Other Palace in the first half of last year, is now in its third week of a national tour with a much-changed cast, only Abbie Budden as the virginal headmaster’s daughter Annette staying on, but still directed by Jonathan O’Boyle.
It’s a 1990s Manhattan-set story of a bet struck between two rich, entitled, sexually voracious step-siblings, Sebastian and Kathryn, both still at high school and predatory. Kathryn seeks revenge after being spurned by her ex-lover by having his new girlfriend, the innocent Cecile, deflowered. If Sebastian, a suave master seducer who logs his conquests in a private journal, does the evil deed, she will reward him by becoming another notch on his bedpost, an idea that very much appeals to him; if he fails, she gets his vintage Jaguar. Sweet Cecile is easy pickings so for the bet he challenges himself to deflower the incoming headmaster’s properly Christian daughter Annette. But when the pursuit turns into a love match, Kathryn claims victory and her prize. It does not end happily ever after.
Not having seen the 1999 movie on which this 2015 musical is based, I was disadvantaged and it took me a while to realise the two principals were still at school. They looked so grown up: Sebastian, tall, blond and charming, the sort of boy every mother prays her daughter will bring home; the manipulative Kathryn a vile piece of work. They make Waterloo Road look like a kindergarten by comparison.
I was also handicapped by ignorance of the music. Where was I in the 1990s – on Planet Zog? Only a handful of the 25 hits which the writers Roger Kumble, Lindsey Rosin and Jordan Ross Schindler had so cleverly worked into the storyline struck a chord. And what bizarre names the groups that made them had: Sixpence None the Richer, Garbage, Marcy Playground and Ace of Base, and that’s just four. All this I missed while running a daily newspaper and trying to keep two wild teenage daughters on a virtuous path (failed), so I cannot even say the score, played rather too loudly by the Cruel Intentions band (MD: Will Joy) for my taste, was a nostalgia trip.
Much of the interest centres on the newcomers in this production: rising star Will Callan, who has been on my radar even since singing ‘Both Sides Now’ at 14 on TV, makes the game look easy, never forcing a note, and makes a perfect Sebastian. His scene under the spotlight with Annette at Penn Station is beautifully played.
Before the days of internet, porn channels and TikTok, young people were less knowing so I felt Nic Myers as the villainess looked a bit sophisticated for teenagers. A little more kittenish and she would appear even more dangerous. With a bunch of power ballads to get stuck into, the performer has plenty of attack but in going for the knockout is sometimes hard to understand unless you knew the song beforehand.
The scene where she teaches Celine (Lucy Carter) the art of kissing ‘Kiss Me’ sees Myers at her best. Carter, arms and legs akimbo, extracts all the considerable humour out of her sexual initiation – ‘I Don’t Want To Wait’ and ‘I’ll Make Love to You’ – from the ever-willing Sebastian. Her moments with cello teacher Ronald (Kevin Yates, impressive) have dark undertones and there’s no surprise when he ends up as another bedmate for the insatiable Kathryn in a complicated plot which brings in homophobia, race, blackmail and drug issues but always in a jolly rather than sinister way.
The role of celibate Annette Hargrove remains in safe hands, Budden’s centred, pure performance catching the spirit of a girl of old-fashioned principles which endure at least until Cupid makes it impossible to resist further.
The interplay between boys Blaine and Greg is masterly conveyed by Luke Conner Hall and Joe Simmons, the former’s touch on the dance floor and in the ensemble numbers (choreography by Gary Lloyd) right out of the top drawer.
The new Bunny Caldwell, Cecile’s pushy mother, is Gabriella Williams. Her take on TLC’s most enduring hit ‘No Scrubs’ – horror of horrors, a Black man daring to write love letters to her little girl – is another high during a camp evening that delivers much of what it promises – the pacing is perfect and director O’Boyle knows exactly what he’s doing with material that’s often tricky. It is nearly a very good musical.
Jeremy Chapman
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