Dear Diary, Heathers The Musical Is Hideous

I’m not sure what Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy were thinking when they threw this musical together, but very little of it lands.

It’s not even insensitive. It’s just stupid.

I’ve not read the book, perhaps I should, and I only gave in to watching the damn thing on Amazon Prime, a pro shot of the stage production, because I like one or two songs from the soundtrack and wondered, how bad can it be?

Bad enough that I turned it off.

I can see why they wanted a room full of die hard fans when they filmed it, because I’m not sure a new audience would give anything close to the Broadway style reactions going on in that London auditorium. The response feels forced, unnatural, as if the show is demanding hysteria it hasn’t earned. The London cast, at times, look like they’re performing through it rather than with it, as though they’re used to a very different kind of audience behaviour.

It’s above me to say this musical doesn’t deserve its fandom, but I just don’t get it. Any of it.

I came in expecting something sinister, funny and deeply moving. After all, why would something be so popular and do nothing?

Well, that’s just it.

The musical seems to take itself very seriously while being camp, colourful and treating its core themes and plot points as nothing more than playthings. Inconvenient, almost.

Take the party scene. A moment of genuine threat is turned into a high energy number, all rhythm, choreography and punchlines. It’s not provocative. It’s not clever. It’s just uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons, and completely undercuts the seriousness of what’s actually happening.

The show wants to be satire, but satire requires clarity. You need to know what you’re laughing at. Here, there’s no irony in the laughter and no real stakes in anything that happens. It leans into the macabre without ever having any bite.

Of course Act 1 builds towards something that should land with weight, and instead it’s met with cheers. Big, loud, enthusiastic cheers. That disconnect says more about the show than anything else.

The casting is immaculate, I’ll give it that. It’s a who’s who of modern pop theatre successes, even if the cast reflects archaic attitudes in its lack of diversity. But not even that can save this ghastly musical from itself.

It suffers from a glaring identity crisis, and instead of owning that, it blunders through a superficial plot about the worst imaginable people. The in jokes and heightened performances rarely land, and even the biggest moments feel oddly lacklustre and underwhelming.

The set looks like it’s been lifted straight out of a school. I understand that’s the point, but theatre is supposed to transform reality, not just copy and paste it. Here, it just feels tacky. Flat. Unimaginative.

This whole musical is lazy.

The choreography rarely pushes beyond the obvious, and the ensemble is far too big for how little it’s used. Half the time they’re stranded at the edges of the stage, and I couldn’t work out if they were supposed to be a Greek chorus or just there to fill space. When they are used, it feels less like design and more like a last minute scramble to justify their presence.

There’s just not enough to care about. The characters are paper thin, the music and lyrics are forgettable aside from the few absolute bangers, and the soundtrack does little more than mirror what’s already happening on stage. Shallow. Superficial. Stunningly underwhelming for the most part.

Fans, it seems, are obsessed with moments rather than the show itself.

I haven’t seen the original film, though I’ve heard it’s the complete opposite of this. That’s something I struggle with, because there’s clearly a version of this story that could have been important, vital even. I’ll watch it and bring my own thoughts to that conversation.

But this isn’t that version.

I can’t do it. I can’t finish watching it.

I don’t understand why this musical attracted fans like moths to a light. People will clap, cheer and scream at anything, I swear.

In the two and a bit songs I saw of Act 2, I’m going to assume much of it is filler in a show that clearly should have been 90 minutes, or even better, an email.

Dear diary, sometimes the hype is not worth it.