Theatre review: Mean Girls

The audience at the Savoy Theatre were largely decked out in pink today. Security let them all in, but frankly they were lucky, considering it's not Wednesday. Tina Fey's (book) musical adaptation of her endlessly quotable 2004 film with Jeff Richmond (music) and Nell Benjamin (lyrics) finally makes it to the West End, and the new Mean Girls doesn't disappoint: Cady Heron (Charlie Burn) goes from being home-schooled by her mother in Kenya to being thrown into the deep end of an American High School. Her guides to the convoluted class hierarchy are queer outsiders Janis (Elena Skye) and Damian (understudy Freddie Clements) but the social group she ends up joining is the Plastics, when she catches the attention of their fearsome leader Regina George (Georgina Castle.) Cady's been warned about the school's ruthless alpha pack, but thinks she can study them from the inside by treating them as the lions she watched in Africa.

But once on the inside it's hard not to be seduced by their power. When Regina inevitably betrays her, Cady takes her down, but instead of ending the Plastics' reign of terror she quickly takes her place as head mean girl.

The original film is probably more or less unbeatable in the American High School genre - skewering the preoccupations with cliques and power dynamics that dominate all those films, doing it with a genuine sense of empathy for what the kids put themselves and each other through, and of course featuring Fey's trademark full-on assault of one-liners and silly gags. With Fey also on adaptation duties chances were good we'd get more than a rote retread and that's the case - the story is essentially the same but it's been modernised in ways that don't feel like a stretch, and while some of the best lines are there, there's plenty of new jokes as well.

This film seems to have been the main source of internet memes for the last two decades, and with so many famous quotes (the publicity has largely revolved around them) I was a bit worried how much the show would rely on them, or even if the audience would try to join in. Fortunately there was no sign of the latter, at today's matinee at least (who can predict what tipsier audiences will do?) and while most of the quotes survive into the musical, not all are verbatim from the film. Fey even nods at how quotable the film's become when Cady's crush Aaron (Daniel Bravo) asks her what the date is, and narrators Damian and Janis tell her she must know the date, the audience certainly do. (It's October 3rd.)

Director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw's production is energetic and full of the right kind of tongue-in-cheek fun, and it's got a strong cast, with Regina's underlings, the fragile Gretchen (Elèna Gyasi) and hoplessly dim Karen (Grace Mouat) providing a lot of the broader comic moments; the latter's big musical number which she stops and laboriously restarts when she gets it wrong is a highlight. Most of the lead cast get their own big numbers - Regina's first of these I found a bit dull but her second-act one is better. Although there's no weak links in the interval Penny said she thought Skye had by far the best voice and was wasted in a narrator role; but as in the second act Janis has probably the stand-out song of the show, "I'd Rather Be Me," I think casting probably knew what they were doing.

In a generally technically-impressive show I can't not mention Finn Ross and Adam Young's video design: Projections may be unbiquitous in theatre these days but you rarely see it as well-done as this, whether snapping from one location to another or turning the whole stage into an animation, at times it genuinely looks as if the surfaces are textured. The video work's so good it was almost enough to make me briefly take my eyes off Angus Good in the ensemble bouncing around in a Superman outfit.

Sometimes getting exactly what you would expect from a show is more than enough, and Mean Girls deliver exactly what you would hope: A familiar and beloved story, but fresh enough to justify this new version, and with the thought and effort put into it to make it more than a nostalgia cash-grab (Penny also positively compared this to Crack Whore: The Musical, which was happy to just rest on the laurels of familiarity and add little of note.) As big-budget West End shows go, Mean Girls is doing everything right. (Although paradoxically I'm giving it bonus points for the pre-show announcement that hoped, in the most deflated voice possible, that the audience have a fetch time.)

Mean Girls by Tina Fey, Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin, based on the screenplay by Rosalind Wiseman and Tina Fey, is booking until the 16th of February at the Savoy Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Brinkhoff/Mögenburg.