Reviews: No, Heather, It’s “Heathers The Musical’s” Turn (Again) Off-Broadway, and It’s a Hoot; While the Film “Unicorns” Tells a Sympathetic Love Story Between a Sexually Conflicted British Guy and a Gaysian Drag Queen

Heathers The Musical (c) Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Theater: Heathers The Musical 
At New World Stages 

The deafening cheers at the newly revived Heathers The Musical tell me an important characteristic about young audience members: They love their nostalgia, regardless of how pessimistic the original source material is. Heathers The Musical, which premiered at New World Stages in 2014 for a five-month stint, was adapted by Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy from the 1989 film that starred Winona Ryder as ordinary high school senior Veronica Sawyer, whose life changes when she is accepted into the most popular clique in school, the Heathers. This new production of the musical (back at New World Stages) originated in the UK, directed by Andy Fickman, hews close to the film’s plot, which has Veronica, now played with humor and ferocity by Lorna Courtney (who originated the titled character in & Juliet), also flirting with the outsider new kid, JD (Casey Likes, of Back to the Future), whose dark energy soon brings chaos to Westerberg High School, including, like, murder. Unlike the musical adaptation of Mean Girls, which also includes a plot of an outsider being adopted by the popular girls and would arrive on Broadway a few years later, Heathers The Musical goes down darker roads O'Keefe and Murphy don’t shy away from, making it closer in feels to the recent musicalize version of the film, Teeth.