In looking at popular media from the last fifty years, you’d be forgiven for thinking every single high school in America is an inescapable hellscape where the popular students are merciless, the unpopular kids are powerless, and the adults are clueless. This viewpoint may or may not always shake out in reality, but it serves an obvious and useful purpose as a metaphor. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Heathers: The Musical, currently playing in a winning production by the Theatre Factory.
Westerberg High, the setting of Heathers, is a metaphor turned up to an eleven, a cartoonish hyperbole necessary given the macabre humor of the story. If you’re unfamiliar with the 1988 Winona Ryder/ Christian Slater movie that serves as the musical’s source material, don’t worry—the show takes it as a jumping-off point, but differs enough to work surprisingly well on its own two feet. Our heroine, Veronica, begins as a member of the unpopular crowd, longing for a hypothetical future where all the students at Westerberg could live in harmony—but, lacking that, longing for a more tangible future where she becomes popular. Given her knack for forging all manner of official and unofficial documents, it’s only a matter of time before Veronica finds herself in the dubious good graces of the school’s trio of resident popular bitches, the titular Heathers. But when their collective relationship sours and Veronica finds herself enacting an appallingly serious revenge with the help of bad-boy new kid JD, she has to decide whether good and evil are as clean-cut as she once assumed.
The material requires a balance tricky to strike: on the one hand, it’s a gleeful revenge fantasy of outcasts against jocks; on the other, a cautionary tale of misjudgments and God complexes. The Theatre Factory’s production handles this balance confidently, navigating the poles with the talents of an enthusiastic cast, smart direction, and a clever set.
The cast is strong across the board, but Emily Hamilla is particularly well-cast as Veronica, perhaps the trickiest part in a show brimming with tricky parts: Veronica is the soul of the story, and while she may not always be likeable or morally upstanding, as portrayed by Hamilla, we’re rooting for her anyway. Cast opposite Hamilla’s Veronica as love interest JD, Lawrence Karl is not as strong vocally, but he convincingly portrays the crucial off-kilter charm that helps us understand why Veronica follows JD down an increasingly dark path.
Matt Mlynarksi’s direction makes resourceful use of his cast and space, finding a solid pace in an uneven script and conjuring up everything from the energy and breadth of a large suburban high school to the intimacy of a teenager’s bedroom. This is due in no small part to Sarah Bender’s boldly colored multifunctional set, which resembles by turns a comic book, a Rubik’s cube, and a set of cracked mirrors. Its saturated colors, punctuated by patches of black, serve as fitting counterpoint to the story, reminding us even at its most humorous moments that there is always something darker behind it.
By its nature, Heathers won’t be to everyone’s taste, and it’s definitely not recommended for family viewing—it requires pretty much every content warning in the book, from offensive language to simulated gunfire. But for all its considerable shock value, there’s a heart to the story and a worthy moral at its end, elements the Theatre Factory highlights with aplomb.
Heathers: The Musical runs through July 21. Tickets can be purchased here.
Laura Caton grew up as a military brat and has lived in six states and two countries, but considers Pittsburgh her adopted hometown. She moved back to Pittsburgh in 2017 after four years of working in theater administration in New York City. When she’s not writing about theater, she can be found translating German novels, watching anything that bears even a passing resemblance to a Nora Ephron movie, and reading omnivorously.
Categories: Archived Reviews