Theatre in Review: Heathers (New World Stages)

When did the musical theatre become a charnel house? I mean, really, people: I remember when Oklahoma! was known as the rare musical in which someone is killed. Sweeney Todd was quite the shocker in 1979, what with all those dead bodies being ground up for meat pies, but in today's theatre, Sweeney is a piker. This season alone there's A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which contains at least seven comic killings, and in Bullets Over Broadway, opening Thursday, quite apart from the scenes of gunplay, one of the characters repeatedly dumps his victims in the Gowanus Canal to the strains of "Up a Lazy River." Add in such long-running standbys as Chicago (featuring the six merry murderesses of Cook County Jail) and Les Miserables, with its Act II slaughter of the male chorus, and you have a landscape of mayhem unparalleled outside of the Theatre du Grand-Guignol.

Adding to the body count is the Off Broadway entry Heathers, based on the 1988 cult film that featured Winona Ryder and Christian Slater as a pair of teens who rid their high school of bullies, bitches, and jocks by any means possible. (It helped to popularize the saying, "What's your damage?") As premises go, it's pretty irresistible, a big slice of satire served with a side of schadenfreude, and in its best moments, the new musical version provides some genuinely heartless hilarity. But Heathers, the musical, suffers from identity problems, switching tones from scene to scene, as if it can't decide whether it wants from us appalled laughter or real emotional engagement. Like its adolescent characters, it's all mixed up.

Things get off to a solid start with the opening number, "Beautiful," which establishes high school life as nature red in tooth and claw, with members of the chorus hurling insults, like "slut" and "homo," and the title characters, a trio of teen tsarinas who make an entrance under an honor guard of crossed cafeteria trays. The Heathers rule over the school's social system with a collective will of iron, expelling the nerdy and unattractive to the ninth circle of social hell. Young Veronica is smart enough to know better, but, as a matter of survival, she is admitted to the Heathers' company thanks to her skills as a forger of hall passes, party invitations, and other vital documents.

Veronica isn't entirely at ease with her new status, and her confusion is multiplied when she meets up with J.D., a new student who favors black trench coats and serious literature; he also has a good right cross, which he demonstrates when, stunning the student body, he beats up Ram and Kurt, an insufferable pair of jocks. (This number, "Fight for Me," staged by the choreographer Marguerite Derricks as a slow-motion battle, is pretty amusing, as is the follow-up, "Freeze Your Brain," which uses J.D.'s fondness for Slurpees as a way of expressing his individualistic, possibly sociopathic nature.)

When Veronica commits social suicide at a party, crossing one of the Heathers and then vomiting on her, she throws herself at J.D., who helps her out by slipping Heather a cupful of Drano. This is followed by an even more audacious scheme, in which J.D. arranges to kill Ram and Kurt, leaving them in the local cemetery clad only in their underwear with a note alluding to an entirely fictitious tragic gay affair. By this time, Veronica is beginning to realize that J.D. may not be the boyfriend of her dreams.

At its most malicious, Heathers finds a fair amount of merriment in murder. Heather Chandler, the first to die, hangs around as a spirit, and, witnessing the school's reaction to her passing, crows, "I'm bigger than John Lennon!" (The addition of a copy of The Bell Jar next to her corpse is all that is needed to pass her off as a victim of depression.) Veronica, confiding to her diary, admits, "My teenage angst shit has a body count." And the funeral for Ram and Kurt turns into a riotous sensitivity session, paced by the number "My Dead Gay Son," in which the boys' fathers admit their long-suppressed desires for each other. But the action frequently turns disconcertingly serious, asking to feel for these broadly drawn cartoons. This is especially so in the case of the subplot focusing on Martha Dunnstock ("Martha Dumptruck" to the Heathers), a plump loser who carries a torch for Ram and who is subject to a vicious prank. Her big Act II solo, "Kindergarten Boyfriend," delivered prior to a suicide attempt, is lovely, and I wish it was in another show. That's also true of "Seventeen," an attractive, Janis Ian-ish lament for Veronica and J.D. On the other hand, the more frivolous passages are sometimes cruder than they are funny. The number "Blue" (as in balls), in which Ram and Kurt try to persuade Veronica to take part in a threesome, depends on shock laughs that don't really shock. Overall, the songs, by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O'Keefe, vary wildly in quality.

Andy Fickman's production keeps the action moving at a rapid clip, which is good, but he can't resolve the show's conflicting tones and the relentlessly staged musical numbers occasionally become grating. Barrett Wilbert Weed is a striking presence as Veronica, deadpanning her lines to good effect; her singing is on the harsh side, however. Ryan McCartan is an effective J.D., keeping us guessing just how far he will go to rid the world of presumed evildoers. Jessica Keenan Wynn, Elle McLemore, and Alice Lee are a formidable trio of Heathers, prowling their stage in their designer outfits and spreading disdain wherever they go. Evan Todd and Jon Eidson make a perfect pair of boneheads as Kurt and Ram, and the supporting cast includes Anthony Crivello in several roles.

Timothy R. Mackabee's tri-level set is unusually spare, even for an Off Broadway musical. Jason Lyons' lighting sometimes goes overboard with saturated colors, although he does some very attractive color chases on the upstage scrim. Amy Clark's costumes are excruciatingly accurate examples of late-'80s youth styles, especially the blazer-and-miniskirt ensembles favored by the Heathers. Jonny Massena's sound design could dial it down a decibel or two, although the lyrics are almost always intelligible; he also provides a variety of effects, including a car horn, school bell, and the sound of a fist knocking on a car window.

But Heathers is an uncertain mix of satire and seriousness, a weakness it tries to cover with loud music and plenty of attitude. As strategies go, it's only moderately successful. Maybe we're just getting tired of murderous musicals, or maybe the show's creators don't really know what they want to say. --David Barbour