“Is that the end?” my companion asked as the safety curtain came down on an overlong 75 minutes. No – there was a further 75 minutes of teen musical trauma post-interval.
“I’m not sitting through any more of that, I need to get out of here’’.
The theatre was packed with teenage (mostly) girls who earlier had crushed the foyer, urging themselves forward towards the highly-priced merch. 15, 16, 17 year old girls out with their mums for a mid-week treat which, with all the whooping and cheering felt more tween pop concert than musical theatre.
Hyped and piped on the socials, Heathers is well known to its late-teenage audience who sing-a-long on Insta and TikTok the dance routines.
It’s America in the 1980s, before MTV and social media. At Westerberg High School, sharp-tongued Veronica teams with rebellious new boy JD to overthrow the cruel ‘’Heathers’’ clique. Their pranks escalate into murders, framed as suicides, turning the school’s social order upside down. As JD’s violence spirals, Veronica must choose between fitting in, rebellion, or saving everyone from a deadly quest for popularity and revenge.
‘Darkly comic’ is a descriptor, but I don’t think so. Throwing up issue after issue with songs belted out to dance routines, glorifies unkindness, illness, abuse and casts more shadow than light on situations that are only too often real for too many young people.
Theatre can be uncomfortable
Theatre should entertain, engage, induce, incite, inspire; it should provoke discussion and critique. Theatre can be uncomfortable too and that’s ok, when there’s a reason.
My companion and I dissected the pulp for the full forty five minute drive from Darlington Hippodrome back to Newcastle. Heathers The Musical did provoke but it did not sit comfortably with me.
I felt deeply uncomfortable, aggrieved even; and the more we talked, the more annoyed I became.
Glamourising trauma, triggering theme followed triggering theme so swiftly as to not allow time for process or reason. Big song and dance routines followed awful events to whooping from the stalls. Suggesting this is satire does not make it so.
The gendered responses of our protagonists to peer pressure and bullying is unhelpful to the characters and the audience; unchallenged without deconstruction, nothing can be learned. Veronica loses her virginity, unplanned and arms pumping in the air to the flashing lights and music while JD, who is at first withdrawn, but then his teenage kicks fired up the anger and testosterone, fuelling a killing spree.
I could see the mums around me, their faces flat. Had they realised what this ticketed treat would cost? I cringed for them – except the mum in row O who looked on as her daughter filmed the sex scene, approval through her inaction. Illegal and irresponsible.
High energy. Simple and effective set. Choreography good. Timing spot-on. Slow-motion fight scene effective. Musical score samey.
“It’s a shame – Red Heather, the Jocks – there was some good acting,” my companion continued.
Bullying, serious peer bullying, emotional abuse, peer sexual abuse, eating disorders, rape, suicude, gun violence, youth homicide – are not for whooping. And whooping there was.
Issues in society, human issues should be brought to the fore, deconstructed and challenged to learn from them, responding emotionally and thoughtfully.
This was an overload of themes for the sake of a paying audience. Call it ‘cult’ and charge a premium. Young people are deserving of so much more.
Heathers The Musical is on an international, three-continent tour. The winners here are the promoters, cashing in on their pulped fiction. Ker-ching.
Heathers may be big, but it is not clever.
Mums save your money, take your daughters out for supper, leave them to read Judy Blume’s Forever. And when they’re ready – listen. It will cost you less and be worth more.
What happens when the media itself becomes part of the problem? Who holds it to account? 14 years after the Leveson Inquiry reported its findings, has anything really changed? And how can we build something better?
Join Bylines Network on Wednesday 21 October, for a vital conversation about the media Britain needs — and what it will take to get there.
The event will conclude with a live audience Q&A.
