Review: HEATHERS THE MUSICAL at the Arts at Marble Arch

As in the original satirical teen film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers drops us straight into the “thunderdome” that is Westerburg High, where the popular girl clique known as the Heathers, led by the formidable Heather Chandler (Liberty Stottor), rule with an iron fist. Good girl Veronica Sawyer (Gerardine Sacdalan) finds herself inducted into the “lipgloss gestapo” but quickly begins to regret becoming the Heathers’ lackey. When JD (Lou Henry), the mysterious and jaded new boy she’s smitten with, tricks her into poisoning Heather Chandler and framing her death as a suicide, Veronica finds herself in an increasingly convoluted moral dilemma as the bodies continue piling up and the influx of teen 'suicides' drive Westerburg High into chaos.

Aesthetically, the musical is a treat. David Shields’ set design immediately immerses us into the small town of Sherwood, Ohio with its grungy 7/11 and candy colours, cozy and familiar and yet sinister under the layer of wholesome ‘80s nostalgia. The show’s palette is campy and colourful, right down to the Heathers’ striking and instantly recognisable costumes: the Clueless-esque colour-blocked plaid skirts and blazers with their matching red, green, and yellow spotlights. The pop-rock score is equally high-octane and bombastic, littered with quippy lyrics and often ripping off and expanding iconic quotes from the film.

The characters are truly what make the show as larger-than-life as it is: equal parts vicious and endearing, zany and exaggerated, and hyper self-aware about the tropes they’re satirising. The cast never misses a beat in doing them justice, each one a phenomenal vocal talent that gets their chance to shine during solos and ensemble numbers. The stand-out is easily Liberty Stottor as Heather Chandler, who embodies Westerburg’s “mythic bitch” with delightful arrogance and sass, making her seem every bit the tiny blonde dictator. The other Heathers are equally charming: Jessica Ibadin earned cheers and whoops during Heather Duke’s triumphant rise to power after her predecessor’s death, while Lou Henry is heartbreakingly endearing as the ditzy but traumatised Heather McNamara. The other scene stealers are Markus Sodergren and Beau Jackson as Kurt and Ram, the dim-witted but wildly entertaining jock duo.

Gerladine Sacdalan, meanwhile, is phenomenal as Veronica: with a stunning vocal range, and an expressiveness and physicality that's very endearing and authentic, equally able to carry the story's emotional beats. Louis Hearsey brings a powerful depth to JD's character, shifting easily from charming, brooding "troubled teen" to unhinged sociopath with a vendetta, terrifyingly reminiscent of a school shooter while still maintaining a grasp on our empathy.

But - and this may be my nostalgia talking - the pair falls a little flat next to their film counterparts. Sacdalan is peppy and optimistic compared to Winona Ryder’s more sardonic, jaded Veronica, while Hearsey comes across more broken and tragic than Christian Slater’s outright psychopathic JD. Their romance is played out as more tender than toxic. It makes them sympathetic, but less boldly entertaining and memorable. And these creative choices are indicative of a larger tonal shift that the musical as a whole chooses to take as opposed to the film.

The 1989 film was relentlessly cynical and unabashedly dark, which is what made it so unique and compelling, whereas the musical offers a more sanitised approach to its material, repackaging its morbidity with a significantly more upbeat and even uplifting note that urges us to see the best in people, as Veronica does. Maybe because of how soberly relevant they feel in the modern age, things like teen suicide, bullying, date rape, and the plot involving a teenager compelled to murder his fellow students are treated with more seriousness than the irreverence they were afforded in the eighties.

But the musical is at its best when it is leaning into that irreverence and absurdity. The most entertaining musical numbers are the ones that absolutely take the piss out of the awful things happening in the story: such as ‘My Dead Gay Son’, where a funeral is derailed into a campy if misaimed celebration of queerness, or ‘Shine a Light’, where Ms Fleming’s tone-deaf attempt to heal the students of Westerburg High turns into a rant on her affair with a married man. The humour also lands solidly, propped up by impeccable comedic timing from the cast, when it unabashedly pokes fun at the story - the ghostly apparitions of the dead teens, scantily clad in the outfits in which they died, are one of the most entertaining aspects of the show, following Veronica around to taunt her without seeming the least bit bothered by their own murders. It's also where the more subtle commentary shines through, with the preposterous reactions to the so-called suicides ranging from whitewashing the deceased to sensationalising the suicide trend for fame and attention.

Though the musical has its heartbreakingly emotional moments, such as Veronica’s sweet appeal to JD in ‘Seventeen’ or Heather McNamara’s breakdown in ‘Lifeboat’, when it pivots too much towards sometimes heavy-handed messaging and earnestness, it starts to feel a bit tonally dissonant.

That being said, it's a wild ride from start to finish, packed with witty one-liners, winks at the audience that gleefully shatter the fourth wall, choreography that wouldn't be out of place at a pep rally, and delightfully dark, campy humour. It takes everything we love about the high school teen drama genre and flips it on its head, packaged in candy-coloured, nostalgia-soaked aesthetics.

Heathers the Musical Tickets