Brace yourself, London: the Plastics are in town and they mean-girl business. After a Covid-induced delay, the ebulliently snappy musical of the 2004 Lindsay Lohan high school-film-cum-cultural-phenomenon is in town – and judging by the frenzied reaction from pink-clad audiences, it is going to be a whopping hit that is here for a very long time. This might just be the production that will “make ‘fetch’ happen”.
Tina Fey has adapted her whip-smart film script for the stage, sprinkling in a few judicious references to current day slang (Jesus as a “nepo baby”) but essentially remaining highly faithful to the original.
A cynic might say that Fey should have acknowledged to a considerably greater extent the overwhelmingly toxic prevalence of social media in teenage lives now, but that is my only quibble. As those who have seen the new film version of this musical released earlier this year will know, Jeff Richmond (composer) and Nell Benjamin (lyrics) supply a highly tuneful score that is a riot of peppy, poppy songs; unusually for a new musical, I came away humming several of the numbers.
Cady Heron (Charlie Burn) used to be homeschooled by her zoologist mother in Kenya, but they have moved back to Illinois, where at 16 Cady is getting her first taste of the jungle that is high school. Smart and sarcastic outsiders Janis (Elena Skye, outstanding) and the extravagantly gay Damian (Tom Xander) introduce a bewildered Cady to the various cliques in the song “Where Do You Belong”, during which musical theatre fan Damian takes a dance break for good measure.
The undisputed alpha students are the Plastics, so-called called because they are “shiny, fake and hard”, led by “queen bee” Regina George (Georgina Castle). Cady correctly identifies, in song, Regina as the Apex Predator, and Castle, with long blond locks and short white skirts, struts around in a manner that is both imperious and devilish.
Janis and Damian hatch a plan for Cady to infiltrate the Plastics and sabotage them from within, but the superficial power of a makeover goes to Cady’s head. This induces Janis to let loose as Skye belts out the anthem of the evening, “I’d Rather Be Me (Than Be With You)”, a song that I simply cannot shake from my head.
Director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw, the man behind the indefatigable The Book of Mormon, certainly knows how to concoct a slick production. An artful set of screens play host to a panoply of scene-setting video projections, and classroom desks/cafeteria tables whizz briskly on and off with the actors still sitting on them.
Burn doesn’t bring quite enough definition to good-girl-temporarily-turned-bad Cady, but Elena Gyasi and Grace Mouat are a hoot as Regina’s loyal acolytes and Skye and Xander are delicious as cynical commentators on the out-for-the-kill action. Lest any unsuspecting ticket buyers forget and commit the sort of sartorial faux pas that drives Regina crazy: the motto of the Plastics is “on Wednesdays we wear pink”.
Booking to 16 February 2025 (MeanGirlsMusical.com)