Get us in your inbox

Search

The Other Palace

  • Theatre
  • Victoria
venue
The Other Palace
Advertising

Time Out says

The home of new musical theatre.

Details

Address:
12
Palace Street
London
SW1E 5JA
Transport:
Tube: Victoria/St James's Park
Do you own this business?
Sign in & claim business

What’s on

Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Musicals

This musical version of the now-classic 1999 film is a pure blast of nostalgia. But like the original screenplay, it’s sharper and spikier than your average high-school-set, singalong teen drama. That’s because of their shared roots that ’90s/’00s trope of taking the bare bones of plot from a much earlier work. Here, the story maps the deviousness of the fin de siècle Parisian high society depicted in eighteenth-century novel ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ onto an elite New York private school in the 1990s. Step siblings from hell, Sebastian Valmont (Daniel Bravo) and Kathryn Merteuil (Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky) treat their classmates as playthings. Kathryn wants revenge on an ex-boyfriend by getting Sebastian to seduce Cecile Caldwell (Rose Galbraith), the girl he dumped her for; Sebastian wants to corrupt Annette Hargrove (Abbie Budden), who’s written about chastity before marriage. Kathryn and he bet on the outcome: she wins, she gets his car; he wins, she’ll sleep with him. It's a deliciously nasty little conceit which, in the film, spun out into a series of MTV-worthy moments. Here, Roger Kumble, the film’s writer, along with Lindsey Rosin and Jordan Ross, turn it into an opportunity to drop in classic ’90s tunes. Loved ‘Genie in a Bottle’? Broke your heart to ‘Torn’? Sang gleefully along to ‘Only Happy When It Rains’? You’re in luck. They – and more – are all in here, like exploding memories. The effect is a deliciously sly jukebox musical, with the songs sometimes reflectin

Advertising
You may also like
You may also like
Bestselling Time Out offers