Theater review by Raven Snook
Lick it up, baby: The high-school-is-hell musical Heathers is back to take another shot at being popular. In case you are unfamiliar with either the 1989 movie or its 2014 musical adaptation, the story centers on not-so-mean girl Veronica Sawyer (played here by & Juliet's Lorna Courtney), who's doing her best to survive the indignities of 1980s adolescence in Ohio. In a bid for social stature, she falls into the orbit of three beautiful bullies, all of whom are named Heather. But when Veronica meets J.D. (Casey Likes)—a mysterious rebel in a trench coat and mullet—she starts dreaming of freeing Westerburg High School from the Heathers’ well-manicured talons. What she doesn’t know, at least at first, is that J.D. is not just a bad boy, but a truly bad seed.
Like the film, which developed a fervid Gen X cult following, Heathers The Musical needed time to catch on. Although its initial Off Broadway run at New World Stages lasted only a few months, it has since become a hit in the U.K., where it has had multiple West End productions; and thanks to a decade of cast recordings and TikToks, it has spawned legions of Gen Z fans, dubbed Corn Nuts after one character's dying words. The musical has even managed to win over some cynical fans of the darker-hued film, including me, who didn’t like it at first pass; I've come to appreciate its lighter, pop earworm–driven take. (Veronica and J.D.'s teenage angst still has a body count, but when the victims continue to sing after dying, you can’t take any of it too seriously.) And creators Kevin Murphy and Laurence O'Keefe have penned some smart new songs, particularly the pivotal Act II showstopper "I Say No” and the goofy "You're Welcome," which dilutes the unpleasantness of an attempted sexual assault.
Director Andy Fickman gives the show an unflagging energy, encouraging most of the cast to go broad and have big fun. McKenzie Kurtz slays as queen beeyatch Heather Chandler, and Olivia Hardy's ambitious Heather Duke is a study in simmering rage; Elizabeth Teeter's meek Heather McNamara doesn’t land all her punch lines, but all three look smashing in David Shields' color-coded costumes. Stage favorite Kerry Butler is a hoot as the clueless Ms. Fleming, who makes her students' trauma all about herself, and the charming newcomer Erin Morton, as perpetual Heathers target Martha Dunnstock, movingly communicates the pain of being an outcast.
Rightly, however, the scar-crossed lovers make the biggest impression. The big-belting Courtney may not nail Veronica’s sarcasm, but she sounds great in her numbers, especially the wistful "Seventeen.” And Likes's J.D. is a revelation. Best known for playing fresh-faced teens in Broadway’s Almost Famous and Back to the Future, he may have seemed an odd choice for this sinister role. But he manages to make J.D. both crush- and cringe-worthy, sympathetic but ultimately scary. When he woos her with "Our Love Is God," you get why Veronica's smitten, but you also root for her, in the end, to fight back against the seductions of violence. In a new cultural landscape in which cruelty is often the point, the mere idea of choosing kindness over killing makes this Heathers’s message feel radical.
Heathers the Musical. New World Stages (Off Broadway). Book, music and lyrics by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe. Directed by Andy Fickman. Starring Lorna Courtney, Casey Likes, McKenzie Kurtz, Olivia Hardy, Elizabeth Teeter, Kerry Butler. Running time: 2hr 30mins. One intermission.
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