Converting a cult film to the stage is always a juggling act.
By its very nature, it’s trading on nostalgia and has to hit all those beats that fans expect from the movie. At the same time, it has to stand on its own feet and be more than just a string of catchphrases and set pieces used to link together a series of songs – I’m looking at you, Dirty Dancing.
Fortunately, more than two decades after Tina Fey’s high-school comedy introduced us to “The Plastics”, its musical rebirth – newly arrived in Cardiff as part of a UK and Ireland tour – manages to achieve both. Enough familiar set pieces to keep the parents happy, enough modern-day tinkering to keep things exciting for the next generation who might be on their first visit to North Shore High.
If you know the film, much of the story is unchanged. Home-schooled newcomer Cady Heron arrives at North Shore High after years living in Kenya with her zoologist mother and quickly discovers that navigating teenage social hierarchies is every bit as ruthless as life on the savannah – something made explicit in one of the more on-the-nose song and dance numbers, when the teenagers parade the stage like a menagerie of animals.
Befriended by outsiders Janis and Damian – who double up as our narrators – she is soon drawn into the orbit of Regina George and her clique who, among many other rules, only wear pink on Wednesdays – much like a number of the audience, who have opted to disobey the rules and do so on a Tuesday.
Directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, the show is bright, brash and moves at a speedy pace, jumping between classrooms and bedrooms with some slickly choreographed scene changes. Musically, Jeff Richmond’s score and Nell Benjamin lyrics is very much in the glossy pop-musical end of things, with some memorable big ensemble pieces.
One of the quirks of the production is that, as far as I could tell, the date is unspecified, and this ambiguity is seemingly leaned into by the design team, for while the action has clearly been modernised – there was no group selfie taking at the time of the original film – it has the look and energy of an early noughties Gap advert.
At the centre of it all is Emily Lane as Cady, whose strong vocals see her transform from naïve outsider to triumphant spring queen. Vivian Panka is a formidably icy Regina George, particularly during World Burn, the show’s biggest musical moment in which she rises from the flames to claim her revenge.
As Gretchen and Karen, the ever-loyal sidekicks to whichever ‘mean girl’ happens to be in charge, Kiara Dario and Sophie Pourret provide much of the laughs, while Georgie Buckland and Max Gill steal plenty of scenes as the likeable outsiders Janis and Damian. Headline name Faye Tozer of Steps fame, meanwhile, juggles multiple roles – and many a costume change – including Ms Norbury and Regina’s mother.
It may not reinvent the genre, but as a lively stage adaptation of a pop culture favourite, it more than delivers a fun and polished night at the theatre. Mean Girls the Musical knows exactly what it is: colourful, fast-moving, and precisely what fans will be hoping for, new and old.
Until March 14
