Scott Purvis-Armour reviews a weak musical with ‘a strong cast’.
For the last twenty years, Broadway producers have been thumbing along the video shelf in the hope of happening upon hits which might monetise our cinematic nostalgia, rewinding Blockbuster rentals into blockbuster shows. But whilst Legally Blonde held its own in the court of public opinion, adaptations such as Clueless left some critics feeling, like, totally, unsure - was buffing every scratched DVD in teenage cinema a way of making meaningful theatre or simply strong-arming audiences from their armchairs into theatre seats?
To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Malcolm in the 1993 smash Jurassic Park, producers have become “so preoccupied with whether or not they could [adapt every popular film into a musical], they didn’t stop to think if they should”. And it will be a dino sore one if they ever want to drill into the amber of that series and engineer a stage musical with tap-dancing triceratops… although that might have some merits…
With a book by Tina Fey and lyrics by Legally Blonde’s Nell Benjamin, the 2018 Broadway adaptation of the 2004 movie follows the same school calendar as the original film: Cady Heron flies north to a Chicago high school after being homeschooled in Africa; the mean girls are still looking for blood in the water at their school cafeteria watering hole; Damian and Janis are still the wonderful Timon and Pumbaa sidekicks who help Cady understand the laws of Regina George of the jungle.
The cast are uniformly excellent. Emily Lane is instantly endearing as Cady Heron, singing with a voice as effervescent and sweet as American cream soda without ever becoming a cliché of high school musicals. Kiara Dario and Sophie Pourret, too, offer fun pastiches of Gretchen and Karen under the eye of Lillia Squires’ excellent queen Regina. Even though she plays three roles - and disappears like a magician’s trick into two of them - Faye Tozer’s voice is woefully underutilised. Given how impressively she roared as Cruella de Vil in this theatre barely a year ago, she is left with hardly a whimper here.
The greatest moments of writing - oddly - are reserved for the madcap Janis and Damian, played for a Greek chorus of laughs by Georgie Buckland and Max Gill. Their comic timing is astute and their chemistry bubbles, finding some new depth in the characters’ shallow pockets. The highlight of the night is undoubtedly Buckland’s plaster-blasting performance of the musical’s best number, “I’d Rather Be Me” - Buckland’s voice is exceptional in its upper-register and any West End producer who understands what makes a theatrical belt powerful should hand her a broomstick and let her defy gravity instantly.
But a strong cast cannot raise a weak musical, and it feels like the creative team have kept trying to make fetch happen by adding more lighting, more dialogue and more choreography. As a consequence, the show becomes gorged to bloatation with Regina George’s high-calorie energy bars: every scene from the original film is repetitively represented, pressing pause on the DVD for largely-forgettable songs which would leave even the most optimistic fan disappearing into the kitchen to half-fill their Stanley Cup. And when it comes to adding another song and another song, it seems the limit does not exist. And if another song doesn’t lift the overall quality, then maybe another three-minute dance sequence will?
But the constant high-kick-arm-extensions of choreographer/director Casey Nicholaw become a bubble-gum pink distraction from the blunt humour that made the source material so punchy. Well-executed as they are by an enthusiastic and precise cast, the dances often feel superficial and… well… plastic. As a consequence, it becomes too choreographed to function.
The result is a two-and-a-half-hour long show with perhaps two-and-a-half truly memorable songs. Mean Girls bills itself as “the Queen Bee of Musicals” but, despite an excellent cast, it buzzes much too loudly and yet has very little sting.
Mean Girls performs at Glasgow’s Kings Theatre until 11 July 2026 before continuing its UK and Ireland tour, including a stop at Edinburgh Playhouse from 17-21 November 2026. For further details, go to the production’s website.
Photo courtesy of dewynters.
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