Mean Girls @ Performing Arts Fort Worth (Bass Performance Hall)
—Jill Sweeney
There’s a trio of teen girl movies out there that serve, in many ways, as cultural avatars for their particular era. For the ‘80s, it’s Heathers. For the ‘90s, Clueless (of course). And for the 2000s, you gotta go with Tina Fey’s Mean Girls.
There’s a lot of shared DNA among the three stories, though expressed in different ways and anchored in wildly divergent world views. Heathers (also adapted into a Broadway musical in 2018) takes a bleak view of the dethroning of its resident high school Queen Bee, while Clueless watches its heroine grow up more than a bit, finding romance but losing her certainty she knows how to “fix” everyone’s lives. Mean Girls, though not lacking in snark, is perhaps the most hopeful of the bunch, ending with a rather utopian view of how high school might be if we could all just get along, darn it.
This more optimistic tone might make it the best suited for adaptation as a big, brassy musical (though fingers crossed for the inevitable and awesome Clueless the Musical)—and the touring production of Mean Girls at Bass Performance Hall (presented by Performing Arts Fort Worth) is a slick, funny expansion of what made the 2004 movie so endlessly quotable. It might even a dash more heart than the original.
And the cast is phenomenal.
Mean Girls, as we’re told in the opening number, “a cautionary tale” of the perils of popularity. Narrated by disaffected art geek Janis (Lindsay Heather Pearce, a juggernaut of brassy belts and heavy eyeliner) and the “almost too gay to function” Damian (Eric Huffman, the show’s secret weapon), the story follows the starry-eyed Cady Heron (English Bernhardt, absolutely channeling a young Sutton Foster) as she moves from homeschooled math nerd to ruler of the popular cliques—and back again, older and wiser.
Cady, befriended by Janis and Damian and prompted by Janis’ personal beefs, uses her outsider status to infiltrate the school’s royalty—the Plastics, led by “apex predator” Regina George (Nadina Hassan), rounded out by insecure sycophant Gretchen (played beautifully at this reviewer’s performance by understudy Olivia Renteria) and the sweet but dim Karen (a scene-stealing, maybe even show-stealing Morgan Ashley Bryant). But in doing so, Cady is seduced by her elevated social status and eventually has to make the call: rule the school, or stay true to who she is at heart.
The show’s main trio of characters—Cady, Janis, and Damian—are an embarrassment of riches. Bernhardt is wide-eyed and innocent without being cloying, and her voice is a marvel of strength and clarity, perhaps especially in her duet with Pearce’s Janis: in the show-stopping “Apex Predator” both women absolutely blew the doors off the place. Huffman, who’s been with the show since 2019, is its comic anchor and your classic triple threat—he sings, he dances, he snarks.
Hassan makes interesting choices with Regina George, underplaying her to a startling degree. This might might draw out more realistic aspects of the character, but takes the risk of reducing our sense of her threat level. Renteria’s Gretchen was surprisingly affecting as the perpetually nervous second-in-command and resident punching bag to Regina, perhaps most in her poignant Act I number “What’s Wrong with Me?” Bryant’s Karen takes everything Amanda Seyfried brought to the character in the movie and turns the volume to 11, especially in what might be my favorite number of the night, “Sexy”, an ode to the joys of sexy Halloween costumes like “Sexy Corn” and “Sexy Rosa Parks”.
Adante Carter manages to bring both heat and humor to Cady’s love interest, the dreamy Aaron Samuels, who gets a lot more interesting stuff to do than in the movie. April Josephine does triple duty, playing Cady’s mom as well as Regina’s “cool” mom, and the Tina Fey self-insert character of Mrs. Norbury, Cady’s math teacher. And the entire ensemble is a marvel of tight choreography, particularly in Damian’s throwback, “let me show you the ropes, kid” number in Act I, “Where Do You Belong?” Both direction and choreography are credited to the busy Casey Nicholaw, whose “other” musical The Prom is playing at the Winspear in Dallas this week.
With a book by Fey, music by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond, and lyrics by Nell Benjamin (also responsible for the lyrics in Legally Blonde the Musical), the show is eminently likeable and witty; if the songs are a touch forgettable, it didn’t seem to make much of a dent in the audience’s enjoyment of the piece, which checks off the movie’s most well-known moments with a surprisingly light touch. The show’s sets (from scenic designer Scott Pask and video designers Finn Ross and Adam Young), don’t break a ton of new ground (relying on the same sort of digital-screen backgrounds as Dear Evan Hansen and other recent shows)—but they’re incredibly efficient in moving the story from moment to moment.
Bass Hall’s lobby was a sea of pink at Tuesday’s performance (one resisted the urge to remind them that Wednesday is already the designated day for such things), and although the quote-littered T-shirts and tote bags might make cynics roll their eyes, let’s face it: there’s a bit of a fun deficit in the world just at the moment. Mean Girls is unadulterated, unapologetic fun. Throw on something pink, grab an “Apex Predator” cocktail (with a lid, natch), and get in, losers—we’re seeing a show.
WHEN: Through July 31st
WHERE: Bass Hall
