"Heathers the Musical" Previews- Page 3

[GreasedLightning]

Posted: 3/18/14 at 1:03pm

Ah, you're right. Forgot about that line.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/18/14 at 1:13pm

I believe one of the female students sings about how she wishes she could look like them, etc.

What this undercuts is their reactions to Heather's death.

After she dies they're all over the news and at the school assemblies telling stories about Heather and how much she meant to them when they really couldn't stand her! The grief becomes all about them! (It also turns this evil woman into a saint- she's more popular now than she was when she was alive!)

This commentary is so relevant today, especially when you look at the way people respond to tragedies on Facebook and message boards. The over-exaggerated concern and worry that is all based off self aggrandizing and attention seeking.

If we think the students liked Heather even a tiny bit it could confuse the audience to believe that they are actually grieving her death.

Heather herself can't even stand the student body. She is totally above them. In the film the party they go to isn't a high school party, but one at a college Frat. Only Heather Chandler and Veronica attend the party, btw. Heather would NEVER be caught dead (get it) partying with her classmates. She likes her power, but she loathes her subjects.

Updated On: 3/18/14 at 01:13 PM

[gleek4114]

Posted: 3/20/14 at 12:45am

In case anyone was interested the window card is now for sale on line:


Heathers the Musical Off Broadway Window Card

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:41am

I saw this tonight. My reaction is "eh." I didn't hate it, but didn't love it.

First off, they need a new director. Some directors know what to do with a shoe-string budget. This one does not. Also, some of those stage pictures were circa 1975 summer stock. Between the bare direction and the ugly, ugly design, it made for an assault on the eyes.

I LOVED the score for the most part. The songs that I loved (the opening, dead girl walking, seventeen) really out weighed the bad. Were they bubblegum? For sure. But I thought a lot of them were going for a more darker tone, especially with the bass sax jamming out. There were some odd choices - why does Martha need a song? Why does the yellow Heather need a little solo that goes nowhere? If you're going to have a song about the Dads singing about their gay sons at their funeral - Don't give the joke away in the song title beforehand!!! The blue balls song goes on too long.

My other major critique, and this goes along with the music, is why does every character need a song/moment to wail/riff to the heavens? I don't think Veronica, at least in the beginning, should be riffing and screlting her lungs out. She's a meek character. She's uncomfortable, she's unpopular, etc. She wouldn't have the confidence to belt/screlt her lungs out. Why does the teacher need to riff and have a huge production number song? It just doesn't need to be there. Even the guys, who are vocally not as strong as the women, have to end each song with a big belty finish.

The performances were fine. No one was terrible, but no one was amazing. I liked Barrett's voice a lot. It's really pretty and rough around the edges. But I never really saw any transformation from her. There wasn't an arch or anything like that. She never grew a backbone, etc. I wanted more. Everyone else was fine. No one bad, but no one great. Just bland, I guess.

Reading all the reviews on here, and hearing from friends about the movie, I think it sounds like it just needs someone else at the helm. I think it has the makings of a great musical - the music is really catchy when it wants to be - but there's a lot that's wrong.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 2:14am

...And to add a bit more.

I don't mind the characters coming back in their underwear, etc. But I wish they were in like black/white or something to make them distinct, they just sort of blend in and it looks tacky.

Martha's big song is fine, but it's a little awkwardly staged.

The tone is just weird. I went into it (having never seen the movie) thinking that Veronica is just going to pick off the Heathers one by one and whatnot. But, obviously, it didn't go that way. Instead, in act 2, it just got a little weird. The idea of blowing up the whole school, etc. It just made the whole vibe awkward and weird. It was hard to laugh at, at least to me.

[chrisampm2]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 4:31am

The film is a black comedy, not a parody. Its purpose is to find humor in discomfiting places.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 7:47am

Yeah, some of the humor is VERY dark, the worst example being the date rape scene, which I've never found funny and don't even know if it really is supposed to be.

In the musical that scene was be altered and softened with no one actually getting date raped. In the film Heather McNamara does get raped/taken advantage of by Kurt in a cow field. Ram attempts to do the same to Veronica, but she is able to get away and JD shows up on his motorcycle to get her out of the situation.

Another scene that was softened was the frat party (now high school party) with Heather Chandler and Veronica. Heather goes off with a guy and it's clear that he expects a blow job from her. She has the slightest moment of hesitation before conceding she has no choice if she wants to maintain her popular status. She unzips his fly and starts to go when it cuts to Heather in the bathroom swishing water in her mouth. It gets an instant big laugh, but then there's a flicker of disgust in her eyes and she spits the water into her reflection in the mirror. She composes herself and goes to find Veronica.

Meanwhile Veronica has been presented with a similar situation, but when they time came she refused to give the blow job. The guy is angry and Veronica has screwed up Heather's connection with her frat boys. Heather is livid, claiming she will destroy Veronica at school on Monday, but what is she really angry about? The fact that Veronica made a fool of her or that Veronica had the guts not to give into the pressure that she did?

There is a different between an over-the-top character and a cartoon. The characters in Heathers should be the former and not the latter.

[After Eight]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 8:17am

Pretty dire, this one, in the mold of Carrie, Bring It On, and Bare. The mold is moldy.

At least Carrie had a couple of nice songs, and the two others, as I recall, had a decent one or two. This, I'm afraid, has none.

Why is it so hard to make a funny, appealing show about teens, with good songs? They did it in the old days, so why not now?. What could be more fun than Bye, Bye, Birdie? And is there a prettier song than Sixteen Going on Seventeen?

Our teens deserve better. And so do the rest of us!

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 10:29am

Adding a chorus of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" to HEATHERS THE MUSICAL would be the kind of bizarre choice that actually echos the weird threads the permeate the fabric of the original film (which opens and closes with the song "Que Sera, Sera")

Good call, After Eight!

Is the understudy still going on for Heather #1?

[darquegk]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 10:51am

I think that if After Eight is serious and not satire, (s)he believes that art shapes life, not that life shapes art.

We haven't had a show like Bye Bye Birdie since Bye Bye Birdie, partially because we haven't HAD teenagers or musical culture like the pre-rock-and-roll sock hoppers since then. By the time of Birdie, it was already kind of quaint and retro, since "Elvis-mania" had come and for the most part gone from its initial explosion.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:34pm

Yeah u/s still going on.

They need to cut "Lifeboats." It's a pretty melody but nothing happens. They should just replace it with a reprise of "Seventeen" and they need to end the show with the "Seventeen" melody instead of horribly shouting "Beautiful" or whatever it is.

Reading about the movie, I really wish they had taken a more serious/dark tone instead of this whole white washing of the whole thing. Even the football players aren't really villains. They're just doofus football players. They don't do anything offensive, they don't really say anything too mean, etc.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:56pm

In the film the football players aren't bright, but they are far more menacing. There's a scene where they attack one of the nerds and hold the kid in a head lock until he is forced to say he loves to suck big cocks and is a faggot. They throw around "faggot" a lot actually, and that's where the humor comes in when their deaths result in a lesson of tolerance.

You can understand why someone would wish these kids dead after date rape and homophobic bullying in the film. In the musical they seem like harmless class clowns.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:07pm

Exactly. I just never really thought they were all that terrible, and got the sense that most people thought they were idiots and harmless. Don't know if that's a directing point or an acting point, but neither really worked. Also, Ram looked like a 40 year old man when he came back in his underwear. Awkward.

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:09pm

I saw this last night and really enjoyed it, despite some of it's flaws.

I too wish it was meaner and darker, especially with the boys. I can see why they've tonally gone brighter/sillier than dark since we're in a world where school shootings happen all to regularly. The fact they cut JD being suspended for bringing a gun to school shows they're trying to avoid glorifying (even inadvertently) school violence. I DO think they need to make Ram and Kurt (damn his arms!) meaner and more vile. I wonder if they added "faggot" back into the dialogue how it would go over, audience wise. It's become a no-no word no one is supposed to say, ever, even if you're portraying a bad person. As it stands now they're just dim, cocky jocks who seem to be murdered for essentially trying to have sex with girls and being small-time jerks about it.

I DO like the tiny bit about how Veronica got in with the Heathers. It was something that always bugged me about the movie. I DON'T care for Martha's back story and combining her character with Betty Finn. Martha's attempted suicide is devastating in the film because you realize everyone knows so little about her. S

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:11pm

Well, the world of the film HEATHERS, operates largely in a place of grey -- there are no absolute black and white villains, only kids doing bad things in the name of surviving the landscape of the jungle they call high school.

I think that's really the point of it, and why Veronica ultimately is the heroine of the piece - because in so much that everyone's experiences and behavior in the film (and in the world of high school) deserves obliteration, she alone fights JD and the destruction, as if it to say "this hell - it must ultimately mean something, right? - Must be worth it. Somehow Maybe?..."

It isn't so much that the musical changes the stock archetypes of the film; but in creating a tone that is closer to cultish or parody, loses the darker thread of satire surrounding those stock characters that gives the movie its power of observation.

It would have been very very tricky to adapt the film's tone for a musical

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:14pm

Well, I think JD is a villain in the film. I mean, he's a sociopathic serial killer.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:21pm

JD is a serial killer, but somehow I still like him (and find him funny) in the film. Maybe it has to do with Slater's performance.

The character isn't quite so evil in the musical. For example he pours the drain cleaner in a cup to give to Heather Chandler. Veronica says they can't give it to her because it would kill her. She goes to grab the other mixture (it's not milk and OJ, but something similar), but accidentally grabs the drain cleaner. Heather's death is truly a mistake.

Of course in the film JD taunts and dares Heather to drink what he has in his cup and the death is 100% intentional.

Also, at the end JD does not come back out of the basement with the newly shown bombs under his trench coat. In the musical he doesn't accidentally stop the bomb with his knife. Veronica just grabs it and runs to the football field. He takes the bomb from her and sacrifices himself holding it to save her.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:23pm

Yes, but like all sociopaths he feels he is doing the 'right thing' - and for him the 'right thing' is ridding high school of the fake/evil/destructive forces that make it a living hell.

That Veronica feels the need to fight to preserve that hell is the point of the movie and and core at the meaning behind the satire.

Updated On: 3/21/14 at 01:23 PM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:25pm

Of course we like him in the film. I mean, it wouldn't work if we didn't.

And again, every post about this musical makes it sound like they had absolutely no idea what the source material was actually about. Sad.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:26pm

I think they knew what the source material was but thought it wouldn't be as 'fun' or 'commercial' as something that was more of a parody of high school rather than a bizarre dark satire of it. They were probably right, but it is a missed opportunity from a creative point of view at least.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:34pm

So it is sounding like they tried to take Heather and veer it more into Mean Girls territory in terms of tone and style. I would say that it is sounding like yet another argument against people who try to compare the two movies (I do love Mean Girls, but I've never viewed it as a companion piece to Heathers the way some people tend to).

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:36pm

Yes AEA - I think thats exactly what they were trying to do.

I also think they likely cut back on the 'faggot' slurs for the musical once they realized that gay men are a large target demography for their audience.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:42pm

Blah.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:44pm

Heathers was an R rated movie, and a dark satire, but there also probably is the point that in the 80s it was easy to slip that word into even PG movies (Crocodile Dundee, etc) So while, frankly, it would make more sense IMHO for them to keep the term in the musical, I'm sure that was some of the fear as well.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 2:04pm

I think society was a lot less sensitive to homosexuality in the 1980s. A lot of teen flics of the era have plots/dialogue/inferences that put being (or possibly being) a 'fag' as the center of derisive comedy.