Greetings and salutations!
Welcome to Westerberg High, where Veronica Sawyer is just another of the nobodies dreaming of a better day. But when she’s unexpectedly taken under the wings of the three beautiful and impossibly cruel Heathers, her dreams of popularity finally start to come true. Until JD turns up, the mysterious teen rebel who teaches her that it might kill to be a nobody, but it is murder to be a somebody.
Following two smash hit record breaking London West End seasons, Heathers The Musical embarks on its first national tour.
This high octane, black comedy rock musical based on the 1988 film of the same name is back with a bang, missing out might just be the death of you…
Where?
The Edinburgh Playhouse
Dates
Until Saturday 11th December
MIX UP REVIEWS
Tuesday 7th December 2021
Cameron (Age 18) - ★★★★
"Heathers is a fantastic show that manages to capture all the most important parts of a good piece of musical theatre. With grand and extreme musical pieces pushing you to the back of your chair, witty physical and written humour, and a wonderful use of well thought out choreography Heathers really can provide.
The story of Heathers was unfamiliar to me when going in, so I had full expectations for having a clear story with believable characters shown. Little to my disappointment, the story never got mangled by any aspect of the musical theatre style – if anything it accompanied it well. The musical theatre style of the show was held together by the actors superbly. Maintaining a constant exaggerated energy is hard for the best part of two hours is no easy task. The grouped roles of trio’s and duo were strong for this by bouncing of one another to keep the ball rolling which makes Rebecca Wickes’ performance more impressive due to her boyfriend’s reserved nature. The exploration of the backstory behind some characters such as ‘The Jocks’ was very necessary and gave more stage time to some of the lesser roles. ‘My Dead Gay Son’ is a masterpiece for this.
The idea of keeping the deceased characters in the show was one of the best as since there was such a high bar set in the energy, their stage presence would have been missed and brought the performances overall style down.
However, with a very well-trained cast, I would have enjoyed seeing more of the moments without the musical numbers as so many dialogue moments (especially towards the end) were beautiful done and touching for the audience. Balancing is hard in musical theatre – it’s all down to the taste of each person. With such an extreme amount of energy needed to fit the musical theatre style, some characters were made more believable than others in their characterisation. Simon Gordon’s performance of ‘JD’ became far more believable in the second half after some explaining had been done on his background. Without the background, it made for a lack of sympathy towards his character that only really came through right at the end. I feel a JD with a more solid bases for his weird nature would have been better fitting for the MT style but with a lack of understanding of his character, he just lacked identity in the first half.
Overall, with some tweaking in providing a constant high energy MT style, Heathers is absolutely worth the watch. The show fantastic weather you’re a hardcore fan or total newbie. With a long list of breath-taking musical numbers, If you want to be blown away – book a ticket."
How do you rate the original Heathers movie?
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