IN 1987, the late Bill Kenwright sent a musical version of Blood Brothers out on a nationwide tour which, combined with West End runs, turned what had originally been a school play into a show with a cult following that has kept it in production to the present day. For a musical it has a very dark side and contains quite a bit of violence, as well as comedy, but that has not stopped it attracting new generation after new generation.

With this new production of Heathers, the Bill Kenwright Company has taken a show, this time based on a successful film, that (with rather less humour) has similar credentials. It was written as an antidote to those light-hearted American college based teenage musicals, where, with few exceptions, everyone has a happy ending. Heathers,with its tales of bullying by the three Heathers(Esme Bowdler, Sedona Sky and Daisy Twells as the Westerberg High Queen Bees), the school’s over-sexed macho males, Kurt and Ram (Ivan Fernandez Gonzalez and Jason Battersby), and the murderous newcomer J.D. Dean (Keelan McAuley), is decidedly first and foremost a black comedy.

With our heroine Veronica Sawyer (Jenna Innes), first ditching her lifelong friend, the unimpressive loner Martha Dunnstock (Amy Miles), to join the all-powerful Heathers, and then forming an alliance with J.D., it paints a very bleak picture with little hope for the future. So bleak in fact that when chief Heather Chandler (Esme Bowdler) and Kurt and Ram having been turned into ghosts, J.D. finally getting his come-uppance and Martha surviving a suicide attempt, it is hard to accept the optimistic Veronica-led final scene.

What is acceptable are Jenna Innes and Keelan McAuley’s no-holds-barred totally committed presentation, vocally and dramatically of Veronica and JD. With less ammunition, Esme Bowdler and Amy Miles more than hold their own in the vocal stakes, but their contributions, and those of Heathers Duke, Sedona Sky, and McNamara, Daisy Twells, would have been even better had there been greater variation in the vocal arrangements.

Working with a score that fits the story rather than produces memorable melodies, Conor McFarlane and Alexander Service (as Kurt’s and Ram’s dads) drew the long straw, and took full advantage of their moment in the spotlight with My Dead Gay Son. Directed and choreographed at a cracking pace by Andy Fickman and Gary Lloyd, this is a hard-hitting production that sets out to take no prisoners.

The big difference between Heathers and Blood Brothers, apart from the additional humour in the latter, is that there are fewer characters at Westerberg High with whom an audience can readily identify. Judging from the audiences’ fulsome response at the finale, there are enough however to keep this show on the road for a considerable time to come.

GRP

 

Photographs by Pamela Raith.