THE PLAY: This is a musical adaptation of the dark 80’s teen cult classic about cliques, bullying, suicide and revenge.

 

THE PRODUCTION: When most of the cast is hovering around 20, you can expect plenty of youthful exuberance. And that’s this production’s strength. They do a uniformly good job of acting and singing with an outstanding Carmen Wiley as Veronica, bringing depth, comedy and a wonderful voice to her performance. Director Deb Clinton has engineered a crisp production, but it lacks the arch stylized approach of the movie. Choreographer Aza Raine has created some snappy moves. Set designer Ben Burke framed the stage with a black & white tile-and-locker motif and added some pull outs to allow for additional elements…efficient but not especially attractive. Ruth Hedberg has outfitted the popular girls in appropriate eye candy. With Michael Jarett’s lighting it looks like he got a bunch of new toys and decided to pull out all the stops, resulting in overblown, unfocused chaos. The play itself takes a shallow approach to deep subjects. It’s prosaic dialogue leaves most of the humor to the lyrics. There’s drama (and several messages) in the content, but it doesn’t translate into the production. Running time: 2:15

 

THE POINT: While the play itself skims thru the serious subject matter with little depth or skill, the cast and staging are full of youthful pluck.

 

(4 / 5)

 

A co-production of Firehouse & TheatreLAB at Firehouse thru 7/16