As a lifelong fan of the teen cult classic Heathers (1989), I was a bit skeptical when I heard it was being produced as an Off-Broadway musical in 2014. And for good reason. Heathers is a black comedy about teen Veronica Sawyer, who is the newest member of Westerburg High School’s power clique: three girls all named Heather, who are the most popular girls in school. Veronica, however, doesn’t like how cruel the Heathers are to the nerds and underdogs. Then she meets J.D., a charming, saxophone-playing rebel, who takes her literally when she says she wishes one of the Heathers were dead.
After the two kill Heather (accidentally on purpose), they decide to make it look like a suicide. Thanks to Heather’s popularity, suicide becomes trendy. (One guidance counselor tells Veronica, “Deciding whether or not to kill yourself is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.”) J.D. uses Veronica to try more “assisted suicides,” and the two start murdering the school’s most popular kids. As Alan Zilberman wrote in The Atlantic “[Heathers] deserves to be celebrated as an early, scathing critique of a culture that celebrates mediocrity and is indifferent to suffering.” And people wanted to turn this into a musical?
Well, yes, and according to some New York reviews, it was pretty good. Heathers: The Musical was written by Laurence O’Keefe (Bat Boy: The Musical, Legally Blonde: The Musical) and Kevin Murphy (Reefer Madness); and while die-hard fans like myself will clutch their pearls at anything in Heathers being tampered with, the writers did add elements, including backstory and additional scenes. But mostly the musical remains faithful to the original even in the song lyrics.
“The scribes consistently come up with sharp lyrics,” wrote Variety, “many of the lines lifted directly from the movie, for the characters’ deepest—or most superficial—thoughts. The lyrics to ‘My Dead Gay Son’ are unprintably funny. So are the boorish lines the football heroes sing in ‘Blue.’ … Even at their giddiest, the lyrics never dumb down the characters singing them.”
There were, however, several missteps in the staging and direction of the Off-Broadway version of Heathers, which Scott Miller, artistic director of New Line Theater, plans on fixing when he stages the St. Louis premiere of Heathers: The Musical this month.
“We’re taking the show much more seriously than the Off-Broadway production did,” says Miller. “The Off-Broadway production was acted and directed like a teen sex comedy, but that’s not what this is. Heathers is potent social commentary about America’s once disappearing (though maybe re-emerging) empathy quotient.”
Heathers includes threatened mass violence at school, and the Off-Broadway musical seemed, according to reviewers, to be trying to distance itself from the obvious association with real school massacres like Colombine. Miller has taken a different approach keeping Heathers: The Musical firmly in the ’80s, but acknowledging current events.
“One of the many things that is cool about Heathers: The Musical, is that the target of its satire—random violence in a culture without empathy—has evolved with the times,” says Miller. “The movie was a cautionary fable about what could happen. The musical is an exploration of what is happening.”
The subject and the stylized language of the movie (which includes lines such as “It’ll be very.” “What’s your damage?” And “___ me gently with a chainsaw.”) make it come across just as sharp and insightful today as it did 26 years ago.
“Heathers is very entertaining, and you’ll laugh at things you probably never thought you’d find funny,” says Miller, “But this show is also a serious conversation … about some of our darkest problems. We lost national empathy, and we need to find it again. The kids tell us in the finale, ‘We can be beautiful.’ The question is: will we choose to be?”
New Line Theatre’s production of Heathers runs through October 24. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Marcelle Theatre, Samuel Shepard Drive (3 blocks east of Grand). On Thursday, tckets are $20 adults, $15 students and seniors; on Friday and Saturday, tickets are $25 adults and $20 students and seniors. For more information, go to newlinetheatre.com.
