PREDATORS IN PINK
Tina Fey (book), Jeff Richmond (music), and Nell Benjamin (lyrics) hit all the standard Broadway musical marks with Mean Girls, now in Boston as part of a national tour. It offers an impressive mix of dazzling choreography (Casey Nicholaw) and soaring voices from a young cast bursting with entertainment talent. Ironically, however, like its central characters, the show sparkles with energy and polish, but feels hollow beneath its burnished exterior.
Joshua Morrisey (Damian Hubbard) and Tour Company of Mean Girls
Joshua Morrisey (Damian Hubbard) and Alexys Morera (Janis Sarkisian) are standouts as the kids who don’t fit in and try to take high school newcomer Cady Heron (Katie Yeomans) under their wings, only to be betrayed by her as she pursues what she believes will be the path to social acceptance. Maya Petropoulos is appropriately bitchy as the villainous Regina George, the narcissistic Queen Bee of fictional North Shore High School. Eager to fit in, Cady falls prey to Regina’s manipulative machinations and inadvertently makes an enemy of her purported protector by developing an interest in in one of Regina’s ex-boyfriends (sweetly play by José Raúl as Aaron Samuels). Cady has arrived at suburban Chicago’s North Shore High having spent most of her sixteen-year-old life living with her biologist parents in Kenya, where she was homeschooled. She quickly applies the food chain metaphor of her parents’ field of study to the social life of North Shore High—Regina is the Apex Predator.
Kristen Amanda Smith (Gretchen Wieners), Maya Petropoulos (Regina George),
MaryRose Brendel (Karen Smith) and Katie Yeomans (Cady Heron)
In fact, when Regina first glides onto stage, her blond hair and shimmering white gown illuminated by an eerie glow, she reminded me of another prominently glitzy figure gliding down the golden escalator of Trump Tower, a figure who, like Regina, happens to be narcissistic, filled with self-loathing projected onto others, and who is also a liar filled with rage and a desire for retribution. Regina doesn’t just rule the social life of North Shore High, she presides over it with authoritarian majesty, issuing rules and directives that make no sense and that nonetheless command mindless obedience. Cady, like almost everyone else at North Shore, is soon captivated by the power of Regina’s vicious assurance.
Kabir Gandhi (Kevin G), Katie Yeomans (Cady Heron), Kristen Seggio (Mrs. Norbury),
José Raúl (Aaron Samuels), and Tour Company of Mean Girls
While Cady eventually breaks free of Regina’s hold on her, she doesn’t do this alone—she needs Damian and Janis, who have always seen Regina for what she is, as well as the support of her calculus teacher (Kristin Seggio) and the nerdy Mathletes as well as other social outcasts. In this version of reality, Regina suffers in various ways and ultimately redeems herself—something that seems unlikely to happen to our own political Apex Predator.
MaryRose Brendel (Karen Smith) and the Tour Company
The set (Scott Pask), with its pastel lockers and modular school desks, cleverly mimics the structured chaos of high school life. Nicholaw’s choreography does the heavy lifting here, channeling adolescent angst into tightly synchronized flailing, as if conformity could be both performed and resisted through movement. If we are to locate meaning in Mean Girls, we can find it in the messy alliances of outsiders who refuse to accept the terms of laid down by the authoritarian Regina and assert their own values in the face of her efforts to humiliate them for not complying with her arbitrary demands.
Kristen Seggio (Ms. Norbury) and Tym Brown (Mr. Duvall)
photos by Jeremy Daniel
Mean Girls
national tour
ends on May 4, 2025 at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre
for tickets, visit Emerson Colonial
for more cities and dates, visit Mean Girls
for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston
MaryRose Brendel, Maya Petropoulos, and Kristen Amanda Smith
