THE PRICE OF POPULARITY
Westerberg High is pretty low. This Reagan-era preparatory school in Sherwood, Ohio is a cesspool of snobbish belittlement. The Buckeye hellhole includes a witches’ trio of mean girls named Heather (Duke, Chandler and McNamara) and Ram and Kurt, disposably dumb jocks swimming at the bottom of the gene pool. Then there are generic hangers-on like Young Republicanette, Stoner Chick, Preppy Stud, and New Wave Party Girl and born victims like Beleaguered Geek and Martha Dunstock (“Dumptruck”), whose last love was in kindergarten. This “circle of life” becomes, quite literally, a zero-sum dead end.
Because, like the retributive justice that fuels Carrie, Sweeney Todd, and Spring Awakening, Westerberg H. has got a nemesis. They’re demure Veronica Sawyer, a popular teen who goes off mission into homicide, and her sociopathic boyfriend, a nihilistic transfer student called J.D. (alluding to James Dean, though this rebel has a cause–wiping out the student body). J.D.’s demolition-destroying dad likes to blow things up: The lethal son follows sick suit. Through desperation, then intent, the transgressive duo (originally Winona Ryder and Christian Slater) proceed to cover up their clumsy killings as fake self-murders. What could go wrong?
Clearly, as this toxic campus (“Go, Rottweilers!”) proves, you don’t need social media and cyber bullying to eviscerate vulnerable adolescents, incarnate selfishness, or make death seem a destination. Though nostalgia should be earned, this 2013 rock show, Heathers: The Musical, trades wholesale in proto-Goth glam and contagious angst. Mostly hewing to its seminal source, Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe’s nasty romp may be scatologically cruder and more sexually graphic than the 1988 cult film, but it softens the edges (and the ending) of a Schadenfreude-packed flick, perhaps because Heathers unwittingly anticipated both the Columbine massacre 11 years later and subsequent slaughters. Even 28 years ago it exploited gossip that kills, date rape, and suicide spurts that surge through schools. (Like Reefer Madness, also musicalized by Murphy and O’Keefe, it leaves a bitter “after school” aftertaste.)
Creepily enough, this guilty pleasure is, as a big dance number says, “Big Fun,” given Kokandy Productions’ go-for-broke Chicago premiere at Theater Wit. Director James Beaudry keeps the 130 minutes moving too fast to trigger the gag reflex. He plays the literal class conflicts for all they’re worth, pitting the Heathers’ treacherous “Welcome to the Candy Store” against the “Freeze Your Brain” rebellion of J.D. and the inanity of grownup dads who fall for the supposedly closeted athletes’ suicide pact (“My Dead Gay Son,” an unpleasant lament at best). In “The Me Inside of Me,” “Westerberg Cheer,” “Shine A Light,” and “I Can Be Seventeen” Sawyer Smith’s peppy choreography delivers adrenaline highs on a regular basis.
Strangely sensitive in “Dead Girl Walking,” Courtney Mack’s no-longer-virginal Veronica is less smoking-sinister than Ryder’s dragon diva. No small request, we’re meant to care for V’s shallow soul. Equally empathetic, in “I Am Damaged” Chris Ballou’s trenchcoat-wearing, Slurpee-sucking J.D. poignantly suggests what might have been if he could ever get death to take a holiday. (Alas, as he says, “Pain gives me clarity.”) In “Fight for Me,” “Meant To Be Yours,” and “Our Love Is God,” you realize just how lonely these motivated misfits really are. Society to them may be corrupt and rotten but, well, projection is a terrible thing to waste.
As a “mythic bitch” and her bulimic cheerleaders, Jacquelyne Jones, Haley Jane Schafer and Rochelle Therrien (“Beautiful”) are busy being empty, though in “Lifeboat” one Heather acknowledges the evil power of peer pressure. Teressa LaGamba as big-boned Martha brings down the house with her forlorn “Kindergarten Boyfriend.” Bad boys Garrett Lutz and Denzel Tsopnang drop I.Q. points all over the stage in “Yo Girl” or wax tender in the affecting ballad “You Make My Balls So Blue.” Veronica Garza is maddeningly clueless as the therapy-crazed principal. Serviceable but so similar, only occasionally carrying their weight, the 20 songs push the plot but thinly justify the musical as a spinoff.
At the end, when Veronica, now wearing Heather Duke’s talismanic red scrunchie, proclaims “There’s a new sheriff in town,” we suddenly realize that goodness mandates its own control freaks. Anyway these four years were supposed to be the end of childhood, not a crash course in the malevolence to come. Still, it’s hard to believe in an innocence we never saw. Westerberg rules!
photos by Emily Schwartz
Heathers
Kokandy Productions
Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave
ends on April 24, 2016
for tickets, call 773.975.8150 or visit Kokandy
for more theater info, visit Theatre in Chicago