Even funnier than the film

Mean Girls August Wilson Theatre, New York

Less than a month after Disney’s

Frozen opened on Broadway, along comes another, very different new musical about female relationships. Peppy, mischievous but far from mean-spirited, Mean Girls has been adapted by Tina Fey from her 2004 movie. It feels familiar yet fresh, smartly reconceived for the stage by director Casey Nicholaw, and it’s even funnier than the original.

Like the film, it takes place in a suburban Chicago high school, where new arrival Cady Heron (Erika Henningsen – pictured) must navigate the confounding social dynamics for the first time, having been previously homeschooled by her parents in Africa.

She’s initially taken in by social outcasts Janis (Barrett Wilbert Weed) and Damian (Grey Henson), but one day, at lunch, Cady catches the attention of Regina George (Taylor Louderman), school queen bee and leader of the Plastics, a trio of haughty, beautiful girls at the top of the social food chain.

Cady infiltrates the clique, at first on a lark, but soon becomes obsessed with exacting revenge on Regina over a guy, and as Cady’s social status rises, it’s hard to discern just who the meanest of the mean girls is.

Fey drenches the story in deliciously dark humour, some of it updated here for the social media age, reserving a warmth for her characters that prevents their being one-note: “Sometimes I feel like an iphone without a case,” sings Gretchen (Ashley Park), one of the Plastics. “I have a lot of good functions, but at any time I could just shatter.” But the show still pokes fun at the ditsy blonde archetype, when fellow Plastics member Karen (Kate Rockwell) sings about the joys of racy Hallowe’en costumes in Sexy: “I can be a sexy doctor / And cure some sexy cancer.”

There is a strong spirit of female empowerment in songs such as Fearless, I’d Rather Be Me and finale I See Stars, as well as in its insistence that women need to support and not belittle each other.

Meanwhile, the score, a mix of comic ditties and heartfelt ballads, ranges in style from old-school Broadway to hip-hop and was composed by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond, who also contributed to her sitcoms 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Some audiences may long for a show that packs more emotional punch. But light and frothy though it is, Mean Girls combines a kind heart with plenty of comic bite.