“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw” isn’t a line you’ll find in the complete works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Meredith Willson, or Stephen Sondheim. But it gets big applause in Heathers: The Musical, a “revisal” that’s knockin’ em dead Off Broadway at New World Stages. I enjoyed the 1989 black comedy, which found its cult audience on VHS and cable, and this musical-from-movie has apparently kept the flame burning for an audience half my age since it officially premiered at the same venue in 2014. Since then it’s been never say die for director Andy Fickman and composers Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’ Keefe, who’ve revised it through several increasingly successful London productions and a pro-shot stage capture performance.
Not having seen any prior incarnation I can only compare it to the movie, which helped consolidate Winona Ryder’s adolescent stardom–and also, she said recently, cost her work, as some producers wanted nothing to do with the lead of a movie that mocked teen suicide. (In middle age she’s had the last laugh; with the musical Beetlejuice returning to Broadway and this and Stranger Things: The First Shadow playing there will be three Ryder-related shows on the boards come fall.) Decades later school shootings and online bullying can be added to the list of woes confronting teens, which would seem to make Heathers an even more iffy proposition for a peppy song-and-dance show. But with some canny rejiggering of the movie’s content it’s a musical that kids of all (well, most) ages will lick up, to paraphrase another of its raunchy lines.
Eighties fashion, music, etc., are never not funny to my teens, so the show stays in place, a world away from our antisocial media and the rest. Return to Westerberg High, where the three Heathers, Chandler (a “mythic bitch” played by McKenzie Kurtz), Duke (Olivia Hardy), and McNamara (Elizabeth Teeter) rule the school, dazzling the dumb jocks Ram (Xavier McKinnon) and Kurt (Cade Ostermeyer) and terrorizing everyone else. Veronica Sawyer (Lorna Courtney) and her schlumpy friend Martha “Dumptruck” (Erin Morton) are under their thumb but when Veronica’s forgery skills get the trio out of a jam they let her into their circle. (Cue one of the brightest tunes, “Beautiful”). But the broodingly handsome new kid in school, J.D. Dean (Casey Likes), sees through her newfound popularity, which requires her to betray Martha. The two hook up…but it’s a fatal attraction, as the unbalanced J.D. takes a vendetta against the Heathers and their himbos too far. If you’ve seen the movie you know what you’re in for, as the hapless Veronica covers her boyfriend’s tracks with flowery suicide notes that ennoble the horrid victims. “Dear diary, my teen angst has a body count,” she frets, as corpses and comic asides pile up.
Heathers is a litmus test for bad taste humor, and further plot summary would read grimly if you’re not already a “Corn Nut,” as the show’s fans are called. The musical aims at the same targets as the film, and brings some of them to a sharper point (like Act II’s opening song “My Dead Gay Son,” a lampoon of homophobia and hypocrisy lifted whole from Daniel Waters’ original screenplay, but given an amusing button). A key difference, however, is that no one really dies in the musical; the dead come back in Veronica’s imagination to taunt her, which takes the edge off their demise. The show revels in power pop vulgarity then lightens the load, as when Martha takes center stage for the wistful ballad “Kindergarten Boyfriend.” Morton sings her heart out but by then, midway through the second act, the material is as defanged as a captured snake. Naughty but nice, playing with taboos without digging too deeply into them as a kind of safe outlet, may be its key to its own cult appeal.
And it has other strengths (though neither movie nor musical sticks an apocalyptic ending that fizzles). Courtney, a Tony nominee for & Juliet, and movie-into-musicals go-to Likes (from Broadway’s Back to the Future and Almost Famous), are hardworking pros who can sell a song or a witticism. There’s not a weak link in the bunch, though the terrific Kerry Butler, from the classic movie spoof musical Xanadu, is underused despite an audience participation gag as Veronica’s mom. Retained from London the creative team, led by set and costume designer David Shields, has the pastel-and-poison vibe down pat. “The extreme always seems to make an impression,” J.D. says. Heathers: The Musical makes one, too, just less extreme.
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