Brace yourself, London: the Plastics are in town and they mean-girl business. After a Covid-induced delay, the ebulliently snappy musical of the 2004 Lindsay Lohan high school-film-cum-cultural-phenomenon is in town – and judging by the frenzied reaction from pink-clad audiences, it is going to be a whopping hit that is here for a very long time. This might just be the production that will “make ‘fetch’ happen”.
Tina Fey has adapted her whip-smart film script for the stage, sprinkling in a few judicious references to current day slang (Jesus as a “nepo baby”) but essentially remaining highly faithful to the original. A cynic might say that Fey should have acknowledged to a considerably greater extent the overwhelmingly toxic prevalence of social media in teenage lives now, but that is my only quibble. As those who have seen the new film version of this musical released earlier this year will know, Jeff Richmond (composer) and Nell Benjamin (lyrics) supply a highly tuneful score that is a riot of peppy, poppy songs; unusually for a new musical, I came away humming several of the numbers.
Cady Heron (Charlie Burn) used to be homeschooled by her zoologist mother in Kenya, but they have moved back to Illinois, where at 16 Cady is getting her first taste of the jungle that is high school. Smart and sarcastic outsiders Janis ( Elena Skye , outstanding) and the extravagantly gay Damian (Tom Xander) introduce a bewildered Cady to the various cliques in the song “Where.
