An Over-the-Top Black Comedy about Teenage Angst, Violence, and Bullying

Historically, theater has been a medium that was accessible to everyday people, whether it was Shakespeare or Marlowe. Although the average attendee to a Broadway show may be more affluent in the United States, the rise of professional shoots being picked up by streaming platforms marks a turn in the accessibility of theater to the average person. Disney+ saw massive successes when they released a professionally taped version of the original cast of Hamilton, and Apple TV+ released a shoot of the beloved Canadian musical Come From Away. With rumors that other shows might be recording their performances and releasing them, theater is finding new life on the small screen. Roku TV’s Heathers: The Musical will be joining this lineup, bringing a beloved musical to a new audience.

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Heathers: The Musical may have missed an official Broadway run, but moved to West End after concluding a run Off-Broadway in 2014. It eventually transferred to London’s West End, where it was subsequently revived in 2021 and extended all the way into 2023. The musical is based on the 1988 film Heathers, which has become a coming-of-age classic and starred Winona Ryder. Like the original film, the musical has managed to attain a devoted following in the English-speaking world and beyond, which is why, in 2022, Roku is releasing a professional shoot of the Off-West End revival to stream for free in September 2022. The musical has found new life through a cinematic style of filming, making it fall in-between theatrics and movies.

This version of Heathers: The Musical stars Alisa Davidson, Simon Gordon, Maddison Firth, Vivan Panka, and Teleri Hughs in the leading roles. Director Andy Fickman, who can be seen as the director of films like the upcoming One True Loves, previously worked with the Los Angeles and New York productions of Heathers: The Musical, and returned for the London editions. Filmed inside London’s The Other Palace, a prominent Off-West End theatre, this is must-watch a professional shoot for fans of Mean Girls or even Spring Awakening. There is a solid reason why Heathers: The Musical stands out from its counterparts, why it has been revived so many times for theater, and how it managed to attain a cult following with a generation that was not even alive when the 1988 movie came out.

Searching for Fatal Popularity

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The year is 1988, and Veronica Sawyer is seventeen and miserable. She attends Westerberg High School, where bullying runs rampant; veronica’s best friend is bullied by the local jocks and there is plenty of drama to go around outside of that situation. Westerberg High School has its own version of the Plastics: the Heathers. Three girls named Heather, all drastically different from the others, run this high school. As the saying goes, bad things always come in threes, but this equilibrium is about to get thrown off. After Veronica pulls a favor for the Heathers, who gets in a sticky situation with a teacher, they enlist her into their tight-knit circle because they see use in her forgery skills. That ends up exposing Veronica to the downsides of fame, as she quickly becomes disillusioned with the girls she’s hanging around with, and the people Veronica loved so dearly are not very happy with this, either. She is forced to write a fake note to her best friend declaring a jock is in love with her best friend, despite getting the brunt of the jokes in school due to her appearance.

When she finally leaves the clique and acts on her crush on the new boy who quotes poetry, everything becomes so much more chaotic. Heathers: The Musical delves into the deep end of suicide, bullying, assault, and gun violence. Perhaps it would be fair to call Heathers: The Musical what Dear Evan Hansen could have been if it cranked it up to a new level, was set in 1988 and had a darker sense of humor. Veronica’s storyline takes her on a path where she not only poisons one of the Heathers but continues to kill other people that once were in the social statuses she scoffed at. She does not mean to do all of this, but it is merely an accident compounded by her new love interest, who may or may not have slight psychopathic tendencies.

One thing leads to another, and Heathers: The Musical pivots more in the vein of camp, added by the use of slightly over-the-top costumes, subverting expectations about what the characters should do and be by the end. With the topics the musical covers, there is so much that could go wrong if it heads over the line of what is okay, but stays nestled in the territory of being somewhat socially acceptable. It definitely is not something one should show their elderly parents or grandparents, especially as a nostalgic throwback to the era it is set in. A lot of topics still hot today are thrown into the story, from suicide to sexual assault, adding a deeper layer of urgency to what’s going on.

Despite this, Veronica breaks the fourth wall occasionally, scenes coming to a standstill, to crack a joke or provide some exposition so the audience knows who someone is and what is their position on the high school food chain. Without these pockets of humor scattered throughout the story, the darker elements would potentially overpower everything else, casting a dark shadow. The humor livens it up, but also reminds us, the viewers, that even in the face of unimaginable and sudden tragedies, there are still moments to smile at a quick one-liner, or how the characters act within a certain, familiar archetype like the dumb jock, or high schooler wanting to party. These moments of scenes recognizable allow the chance to make it so much more real, grounding the musical in something that ultimately makes it stand out due to its authenticity.

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A Black Comedy Done Right

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Heathers: The Musical is a delight to watch. The songs and black comedy elements of the show meld together to create a production that is a mixture of issues tethered together through the perspective of Veronica, who was not a part of the Heather clique initially. It becomes pretty easy to forget that this was a live performance outside of the occasional shots of the audience, and the acting and singing are top-notch. There are very few moments where the pacing does not feel electric, anticipating what J.D., Veronica, or one of the Heathers is going to say or do next. The story spins on itself halfway through its first arc, taking the viewer down a ride that not only will make them slightly uncomfortable, but laugh about the fact it is kind of uncomfortable.

However, there is a caveat to all of this: it feels very much like a product of Generation Z. The characters speak in jargon characteristic of youths today, and they embody the seemingly age-old high school experience in the United States. The black comedy elements of Heathers: The Musical would not land well with certain demographics, and require a certain kind of open-mindedness when it comes to the subject matter and the language used throughout. Considering the original, Heathers, which came out in 1988, it may be bold to say that Heathers and Mean Girls exist on the same inspiration spectrum. Some scenes in the musical mirror elements of the Mean Girls Musical that circulated in the United States after a brief Broadway run, but, all in all, the characters between the two do an excellent job of distinguishing themselves. Instead of Veronica assimilating into the clique and becoming more like her counterparts, the story takes an ugly turn after Veronica and J.D. accidentally kill one of the Heathers.

Perhaps theater adapted for film and television is one of the biggest successes to come out of the shift to streaming platforms. Disney+’s release of Hamilton created an entirely new set of fans for the series, and most shows do professionally record at least one performance with the original cast. Heathers: The Musical keeps all of its theatrical charms in this new medium, and, with the right camera angles and shots, feels legitimate as a movie. Unlike other shows, such as Come From Away, it is not too painfully obvious this is a work of theater outside of the audience reactions that occur every so often. Maybe the world will see an adaptation of the music done in the traditional cinematic sense, but, until then, this version is more than enough.

Heathers: The Musical will be available to stream for free on Roku on September 16, 2022.

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