Review: Mean Girls the Musical, King’s Theatre Glasgow
⭐️⭐️
“Stop trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen.”
Just one line from Tina Fey’s iconic – and much quoted – coming of age movie, Mean Girls. It’s also a metaphor for its stage musical sister – that sometimes trying to make a successful musical spin off… is not going to happen.
Now more than twenty years old, the 2004 film still remains iconic – a comically dark observational swipe at millennial culture and the murky world of climbing the social ladder in a new place.
When Cady Heron (Emily Lane) ups sticks from Kenya to a Chicago high school, she is forced to quickly navigate the social cliques that will make or break her.
A shock opening with “The Plastics” – the ruthless tribe of rich, popular girls – presents Cady with a problem; can she take her place at the top of the social pyramid, and in doing so cut ties from those friends who care more for her than the vacuous elite Plastics do?
Georgie Buckland (Janis) and Max Gill (Damian) are those friends – a delightful pair of devilish guides for Cady. Conservatoire-trained Buckland soars as gothic Janis and Gill has Glasgow’s King’s in the palm of his hand, delivering some of the most iconic lines from the film with fabulous flourish.
Mean Girls’ only redeeming feature is its stellar cast. An immensely talented troupe grate harshly against a deeply disappointing production, that makes one single creative leap in its entirety.
Fans of the original can breathe – much of the story is carbon copied into the stage musical. Unfortunately, familiarity alone cannot sustain a musical when the songs themselves fail to justify its existence.
A brash, bold opening number is where Mean Girls peaks – setting expectations to a point it will never again deliver. Drab sets are washed out in a pale hue of Joel Shier’s bland lighting, failing to bring anything into the third dimension on stage.
For a professional production on this scale, its creative ambition is remarkably limited.
This adaptation forces its audience to endure deeply forgettable song after deeply forgettable song. Jeff Richmond’s score rarely produces a memorable melody, while Nell Benjamin’s lyrics fail to capture the wit that made the film so beloved.
Against a wealth of other coming of age musicals, stage adaptations of classic films and edgy, brave new work, Mean Girls sits firmly apart from its successful contemporaries.
It’s impossible not to feel short-changed by this opportunity for some to make a quick buck on a much loved movie franchise. There appears little love and care attached, beyond the deeply committed cast.
There are only so many apologies that can be made when comparing the show to its original movie – the very reference point for its existence and popularity. Where the film’s larger-than-life characters burst from the screen in just over 90 minutes, Casey Nicholaw’s stage adaptation takes almost that long to reach the interval.
Whatever momentum the opening establishes is quickly lost as the show meanders to its interval at glacial pace. Despite its lengthy running time, there is little time for any emotional development of its carbon copied characters from the film.
Despite the commitment of an exceptional cast, Mean Girls never escapes the shadow of the film that inspired it.
A musical should enhance its source material, not simply remind audiences how much they enjoyed it the first time.
Mean Girls the Musical at King’s Theatre, Glasgow until Saturday 11th July, then touring]
Photo credit: Paul Coltas
