Erika Henningsen, Ashley Park, Taylor Louderman and Kate Rockwell in Mean Girls at the August Wilson Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus
Mean Girls continues at the August Wilson Theatre, New York.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
High school chaos and raunchiness reign supreme in Mean Girls, the new Broadway musical adaptation of the 2004 movie comedy that burrowed deeply into the psyche of America’s teenage girls.
And at times, it all makes for a frisky funny entertainment, as it defines the various cliques and worries about popularity that can shape – or misshape – these coming-of-age years. However, there are other times when the abrupt plot and character turns, foreshortened to make room for a plentitude of production numbers, begin to feel a little messy and overworked as well.
The show’s book is by the celebrated writer and performer Tina Fey, who wrote the screenplay for the film. The score, dominated by pumping pop/rock beats and anthems with just the tiniest nod to vintage show tune, features lyrics by Nell Benjamin, whose credits include Legally Blonde, and music by Jeff Richmond, Fey’s husband who has worked with her on the award-winning television shows, 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live.
The script is laced with Fey’s off-kilter brainy humour that seeps into the lyrics as well. When Cady, the teenage heroine, is told that she and her zoologist parents are moving back to America from Africa, she exclaims: “America? Maybe I can meet an obese person.”
She also sings about her excitement: “I got dreams exciting me/Like a fire exciting me/I tried to confide in my lions, but they keep biting me.”
Casey Nicholaw’s blithely inspired direction further matches Fey’s tone, and his angular choreography exudes both a youthful exuberance and a sense of humour. For example, that opening sequence depicting Cady’s life in Africa, makes a teasing reference to The Lion King as an array of cuddly animal puppets and costumes traipse across the stage.
The plot starts in earnest with Cady’s first day in a Chicago high school after her years of home-schooling in Africa. She is taken under the wing of two of the school’s artsy students, the painter Janis and her boy pal Damian, who has musicals in his DNA and is, as Janis says: “almost too gay to function.” They point Cady in the direction of a trio of girls who pretty much rule the student roost. They are known as: “the Plastics…shiny, fake and hard.”
The Plastics are led by the imperious Regina, who as she sings, has “money and looks” and is “the prettiest poison you’ve ever seen”. Her two ditzy acolytes are the insecure but knowing Gretchen and the sex-obsessed Karen.
Janis has a long-standing grudge against Regina, and it’s her hope that Cady can infiltrate the Plastics and act as a spy. And Cady is indeed accepted by the Plastics, until Cady takes a liking to Aaron, Regina’s one-time flame.
From then on, all kinds of havoc break loose. Cady verges on becoming a Regina-like meanie but is eventually redeemed by her skills at math (she wins a victory for the school’s math team), her election as “Spring Fling Queen” and her final realisation that all the kids in the school are “stars”.
Before she launches into the big, closing ballad ‘I See Stars’ she tells her assembled schoolmates: “When I first moved here, I wanted everyone to like me so bad… I kind of lost myself in the process… We all do that, I think. We think we have to change ourselves to be good enough. But looking at you guys from up here… I wish you could see it. You’re so awesome.”
This sudden reversion to niceness is not terribly credible and seems a little calculated to give the audience a bit of a moral uplift as they leave their $100-plus seats. Still, the sterling cast and snazzy production values help at least partly to gloss over such suspect motives and shortcomings.
As is pretty standard on Broadway these days, the company exhibits seemingly bottomless reserves of talent and energy when it comes to belting and ultra-kinetic dancing. Erika Henningsen also brings an appealing freshness to Cady, while Taylor Louderman infuses some glamour along with self-deprecation into the menace of Regina. As her sidekicks, Ashley Park’s Gretchen and Kate Rockwell’s Karen deliver telling portraits of comic slavishness.
There are sympathetic well-etched contributions from Grey Henson as Damian and Barrett Wilbert Weed as Janice, and as might be expected, it’s the musicals-obsessed Damian who brightly leads the perfunctory tap dance number.
On the adult side of things, Kerry Butler makes impressive character switches as she portrays a trio of ladies: Cady’s mother; Regina’s determinedly girlie mother, and the spikey maths teacher Mrs Norbury. (The last-named is the role played by Fey in the movie.)
The proceedings are constantly enlivened by the video design of Finn Ross and Adam Young, throwing an array of funny, cartoony images on Scott Pask’s inventive unit set, lighted in dazzling fashion by Kenneth Posner. The costumes by Gregg Barnes add to the dazzle as well as some high school authenticity.
Further on the bright side, Mean Girls should be a powerful addition to the roster of shows building a youthful audience for Broadway.
Even with its rather off-handed references to and jokes about vaginas, nude internet photos, anorexia and casual sex, it seemed to cause no particular discomfort at the performance seen, a show well attended by young girls, accompanied by their moms. Guess kids are just growing up faster these days. Maybe Mean Girls will help them do just that and turn out nice in the process.
Ron Cohen
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