‘Mean Girls’ transitions from screen to stage with style
Overflowing with kinetic energy, whisking forward from start to finish, the touring Broadway production of
“Mean Girls” at the Hobby Center is also rooted in strains of melancholy and social anxiety, two common ingredients of the high school milieu that provides the musical’s setting. These qualities were certainly present in the 2004 movie on which the production is based, but the songs, written by Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin, raise the stakes. They give all those hormones and status concerns and casual betrayals, yearning to burst out, a lingua franca and a pronounced means of expression.
Chances are that you know the movie, written by Tina Fey (who also wrote the book for the musical) and starring Lindsay Lohan as Cady, who moves from Africa with her biologist parents to Illinois, just in time to enter the high school jungle. Played by English Bernhardt in the touring production,
Cady gets pulled in opposite directions in her quest to make friends.
On one side are Damian
(Eric Huffman) and Janis (Lindsay Heather Pearce), proud outsiders who explain the cafeteria social strata in one of the show’s many witty numbers, “Where Do You Belong?” Then there are the Plastics: Queen bee Regina (Nadina Hassan), sycophantic Gretchen (Jasmine Rogers) and simply stupid Karen (Morgan Ashley Bryant). Together, they lord over North Shore High School, spreading gossip and innuendo as a means of hiding their own deep insecurities. They see new girl Cady as a worthy project, a malleable Plastic in the making.
There are many standouts in the cast, including Huffman, who brings tap skills and comic timing along with his big voice; and April Josephine, who fills the Fey role of math teacher Ms. Norbury as well as two other parts, Cady’s and Regina’s dramatically different moms. But the stars of show might be video designers Finn Ross and Adam Young. The settings are created largely through an ever-changing assortment of digital backdrops, everything from classrooms to bedrooms to a shopping mall, complete with made-up storefronts (Suburban Outfitters, PJ Calamity’s). Together with scenic designer Scott Park and lighting designer Kenneth Posner, they create a clean, streamlined but endlessly imaginative visual scheme that fuels the show’s sensation of perpetual motion.
Director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw keeps it all humming, as does the ensemble, creating an atmosphere of controlled chaos. “Whose House Is This?” nails this tone, accompanying a wild house party at Cady’s that might hit a little too close to home for some. But there’s also room for introspection here. “What’s Wrong With Me?,” performed by Rogers’ Gretchen, is an aching statement of confusion and a musical encapsulation of never feeling good enough, a feeling that lingers over the high spirits of the entire production. In “Mean Girls,” facades of superiority can’t quite mask unhappiness.
Fans of the film or the original Broadway show should find plenty to like here. And there’s more to come: Fey is working on a movie adaptation of the musical. No reason to think it won’t be fetch.