Heathers is a singing, swinging, laugh-out-loud musical about the darker side of teen angst

Saskia Bormans in Heathers the Musical. Photo: Michael Dupré

By Keith Bain

25 Jul 2024

What makes this musical about teen angst run wholeheartedly against expectation, is its leaning into very relevant and often very troubling realities. Albeit in a way that makes you laugh at the dark humour.

Geeks, freaks, vamps, tramps, jocks, nerds, sluts and – of course – that one rebel dressed all in black, who just might in fact be a serial killer in the making.

Teen Americana is responsible for some of entertainment’s most enduring stereotypes, character clichés and tropes that have for decades kept audiences transfixed. They exist on TV, in movies, and are stock-in-trade of musicals from classics like West Side Story and Grease to such modern fare as Mean Girls and Dear Evan Hansen.

Heathers: The Musical, which is currently enjoying a limited sold-out run in Cape Town, is based on a 1988 movie starring a young Christian Slater as a sharp, slightly shifty-eyed outsider, and a young Winona Rider as an ambitious, too-bright-for-her-own-good offbeat social climber who, on top of cornering the market in forging her peers’ handwriting, happens to have her sights set on becoming her school’s "queen bitch".

The stage musical came much later, but it is clear from the Waterfront Theatre School’s production that none of the underlying teen angst nor the collection of cruelties that young people have to navigate have disappeared.

William Young and Liesel Irene Horn in Heathers. (Photo: Michael Dupré)

Waterfront Theatre School's Heathers: The Musical. (Photo: Michael Dupré)

We might now live in a more woke world but the pressures pushing down on young people are no less real. The musical, like the film whose storyline it closely follows, covers so many pertinent issues, from bulimia and bullying, to violent homophobia and teen suicide.

Even with all of these real-world worries pressing down, it’s a relief to spend time in a world before cellphones and social media, to witness a young cast bring to life a story brimming with problems that feel true and real to their lived experience.

In a nutshell, the titular “Heathers” are a trio of senior schoolgirls whose main duty at the top of the social pyramid is to make the lives of everyone else miserable. They form an insular clique and look down on the minions below. Until, that is, they discover Veronica Sawyer (played by a vivacious and talented Liesel Irene Horn) and her ability to forge hallway passes, absentee letters and fake love notes that can be used to break hearts and potentially destroy lives.

The Heathers adopt Veronica into their circle of nastiness just as she becomes infatuated with the school’s new dark horse, JD.

What unfolds is a higgledy-piggledy story that conflicts with expectation and throws all those stereotypes and tropes under the bus. Heathers dares to deal with big, scary topics and uses raw, unsanitised language and some stunning songs (such as My Dead Gay Son) to broach its myriad teen issues head-on – and in often very dark ways.

Heathers: The Musical. (Photo: Michael Dupré)

How all this adds up to becoming a musical and how it works as comedy is one of those great paradoxes of offbeat entertainment, but the result is a rollicking show, perfect for young audiences and important for adults to see too.

It has a bit of everything – poison, guns, knives, blackmail, hubristic teachers, horrible parents, explosions and even the theatre’s most inappropriate coming-out moment (two dads at their dead gay sons’ funeral) – and aside from this almost shockingly enormous narrative payload, there’s room for deeper emotional exploration, so it’s not just fun and games, but a pretty heartfelt ride you’re taken on, too.

The production, directed by Paul Griffiths and starring a large student ensemble, feels huge.

In places, perhaps too big for the smallish space in which it’s being performed. There’s a sense of the cast being somewhat constrained by the space, especially during the big full-cast dance numbers.

The too-small space may also have something to do with what felt like slightly restrained characterisations. In moments, I felt like we were watching performances designed for camera, as though the instruction had been to “keep it small” rather than to lean into the outsized dimensions of the musical as a genre.

Photo: Michael Dupré

The lovely William Young, for example, who plays the wounded and gently frightening rebel-on-a-mission, JD, seems to have modelled his character on Christian Slater’s movie performance. This works on one level and definitely conveys JD’s deep broodiness, but it also renders him just a touch too meek and mild within the context of a musical which is, by necessity, big and brash, loud and invariably OTT. He’d have benefited from trusting himself more, believing in his unquestionable talent, going bigger and more boldly, allowing himself to muster some of the character’s loopier and darker aspects. Because, in those moments when he does trust himself, he’s a star.

Heathers: The Musical is on at the Artscape Arena. (Photo: Michael Dupré)

Saskia Bormans in Heathers: The Musical. (Photo: Michael Dupré)

After all, one of the show’s driving sentiments is encapsulated in its opening song, Beautiful. While laced with irony, it serves as a reminder to all the young people – those in the world of the musical and those out there in the real world – that what they possess is an innate beauty. And that no one should be permitted to suppress that. That every young person deserves a chance to shine.

Heathers may be set in an American school saturated with tropes and stereotypes from the 1980s, but it is no less profound and relevant today.

In a world where the pressures on young people are now beamed into their overtaxed imaginations via the devices they carry with them all the time, it’s a musical that asks us to remember what’s real. DM

The Waterfront Theatre School’s production of Heathers is the first time the musical has been performed in South Africa. The run at Artscape Arena ends on 27 July. Although sold out, additional performances have been added, so check at Webtickets.

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