IF you look up “Cruel Intentions” on Wikipedia you have the choice between the film and the “franchise” … and really, that says it all.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos wrote his infamous epistolary novel back in 1782, and many adaptations have followed, on stage, film and television. Perhaps Jordan Ross, Lindsey Rosin and Roger Kumble knew the original and thought that 90s pop music reflected the story., Perhaps, on the other hand, they wanted another smash-hit jukebox musical to stimulate a new phalanx of whooping, screaming, singalong audiences … and to create a franchise with all the merch and mayhem that goes with it.

It certainly was not aimed at long-experienced theatre-lovers (among whom I count myself) whose interest in the genre is for entertainment that stimulates, questions, delights, astonishes, moves and breaks hearts. I have never felt so old in a theatre in my life ….

This is a show for people whose musical references are rooted in the 1990s. Don’t expect the songs from the film on which the touring show is based – only two of them make the cut, replaced by other anthems (“a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group”).

This show is colourful. The five-strong, onstage band has a chance to shine with some terrific guitar solos. The performers, 12 of them, are energetic dancers, miked-up to high volume that distorts what might be good voices to a sometimes excruciating belt. The audience mostly loved it.

The company is led by Will Callan as Sebastian Valmont, the pretty, preppy, trust fund boy who has had so many girls he has lost all delight in it, and his step sister Kathryn Merteuil (Nic Myres) prowling around the stage in her quest to bring everyone in sight into her own miserable disillusionment. The creators have nodded to the original with the names.

Now if they had wanted to be REALLY, really clever, they might have brought in the odd Ghislaine, Jeffrey or princeling as the arch groomers and despoilers, and then this same audience could have deluged their socials with calls for cancellation and other modern punishments, all to the crude and unsubtle soundtrack of some other songs, going cheap.

GP-W