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Mickey Jo Theatre
You were so Clueless. Whoa. Which is not a song from this musical, but it is what my brain thinks of every single time. Also, I know the beret looks horrible, but this is how they wore them in the 90s. Thank goodness I only reached a maximum of 5 years old in that decade because honestly, none of this is working for me. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. I'm not even going to begin to attempt to describe the outfit that I have on right now to talk about the new musical stage adaptation of the popular 90s film Clueless. Now, I finally saw the show towards the end of last week. It recently opened at the Trafalgar Theater here in London's West End. This is a really interesting show because it's been in development for quite a long time. I'm pretty sure there was a version of it that had workshops, readings, whatever with an original score. They then pivoted to an Off Broadway production years back starring Dove Cameron, which was a jukebox version which incorporated I guess perhaps songs from the film's soundtrack or songs from the era, not unlike Cruel Intentions, which calls itself the 90s musical. And while that may be a version of the show that some of you have seen before, this new production is an entirely different one because this has an original score featuring music by the singer songwriter Katie Tunstall with lyrics from Glenn Slater, with a book written by Amy Heckerling, also the writer of the original film. If you don't know, Clueless was a 90s film based on Jane Austen's Emma. And with so many stage adaptations of popular and cult teen movies having proven very successful, particularly in London, it's no surprise that Clueless has eventually made its way to the West End. Look at Mean Girls. Look at Heather's, a really prolific UK hit. But can this show's combination of 90s nostalgia and iconic outfits live up to those other popular shows? That is what we will be talking about today. If you have already seen this new production of Clueless on the stage, let us know what you thought in the comments section down below. And if you do enjoy my review, make sure that you are subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel with the notifications turned on or following me on podcast platforms so you don't miss any of my upcoming theatrical coverage, including West End and Broadway shows. In the meantime, here is what I thought about Clueless. Now, to make it super clear where we stand right at the beginning of this one, I still have not seen Clueless as a film. I know, I know. Listen, it was brought into the world the same year that I was, and I haven't yet gone back to rediscover it. I've seen a lot of films that were very similar from the years that followed. I've seen get over it and 10 things I hate about yout and Mean Girls and Bring it on, some of which are already staged musicals, others of which are in development to be. But Clueless, essentially, I think, never really landed with my slightly older sister and by extension I never saw it. So I'm not really going to be able to talk about how this works as an adaptation. But that does mean that I could talk about how it works as a standalone show. And I think regardless, all of these musicals, even if they're based on iconic films, and even if many of the audience members are there to enjoy a nostalgic fondness for that film, I think they still ought to be able to stand on their own two feet. For people who don't know the thing that it's based on. And in the world of screen, to stage adaptations, musicals based on films, particularly based on this genre of film, this definitely sits alongside them in terms of how it works as an adaptation. Tonally, it lives in a very similar place to the likes of Heather's, to the likes of Mean Girls. You've got a dynamic young cast playing these very animated characters. The whole thing is very exuberant. We see a lot of those similar high school musical theater tropes. There's a Isn't My Life Perfect introductory number. We get to know the different characters at school. We get to see the long suffering and exhausted parents. We do a We're having a house party musical number which are objectively always horrible, but we commit to them anyway. And yet, in terms of how successful I think Clueless is as a musical, I wouldn't say it necessarily reaches the echelons of Heathers and Legally Blonde or perhaps even of Mean Girls, which I think sits a little below those two as it is. I think I'd call this better than Pretty Woman, but perhaps only just. And why I say that is for a handful of reasons. I do think that the show is sweet. I think it's entertaining, I think it's nostalgic enough for people going to see it who are expecting to see certain outfits, hear certain lines, all of that stuff. I think it's a very cute show that at no point throughout its duration becomes anything other than a three star performance. And curiously, not unlike the musical Groundhog Day. Didn't think I'd be comparing that to Clueless. FYI, when I sat down to film this review, it has this slightly unusual narrative structure wherein the first act doesn't offer us really anything in terms of stakes. It's all cute and fluffy and paper thin. And the second act has a decent amount more substance to it. Interestingly enough, when I say the first act has no stakes, there's an iconic moment from the film where Cher Horowitz, our protagonist, is held at gunpoint. And it's hilarious to me that we go from nothing really mattering to an entire robbery at gunpoint, like there's no stakes and then suddenly gunpoint robbery. And you could amount this shift between the first and second acts to Cher kind of gaining an amount of perspective and a little more depth as a human being. There's a little bit of a reckoning that happens as realizes that the way that she navigates the world and the way that she tries to manipulate everyone around her. We'll talk about the plot in just a moment. For those of you who have no idea, as she realizes that this isn't necessarily going to be feasible or a fair or right thing to do. But we've seen this happen elsewhere, and never to the detriment of the show's two act narrative structure. In fact, it's a pretty common trope within a lot of those musicals that I already mentioned. Elle gains considerable depth and understanding as she goes through the events of Legally Blonde. Veronica Sawyer, the same thing in Heather's Cady Heron, very much so in Mean Girls. Even the lead in Bring it on, whose name I have absolutely forgotten, realizes that not everything is about cheerleading, just most things. But in Clueless, we spend the entire first act setting everything up, only to finally achieve payoff after the interval, which is a very bold misstep here, I think, actually. And I will expand on a lot of other issues that I think the show faces, but if I were to diagnose what I think the central problem here is, I think this is a piece which has been in development for such a long time and which, you know, seems so marketable and commercial. Commercial. On the face of it, when you see success for Heathers, which was this cult movie, when you see success for Legally Blonde and these similar shows, you, as someone holding the rights to Clueless, think, there's got to be a way to make this work. We really have to believe in this. This could be huge. But the product feels ultimately like something which has been a little too produced. And somewhere along the way, while it is still entertaining and crowd pleasing, it has lost a certain amount of its heart. And whatever the sense of its story is meant to be, whatever is meant to convey, it has lost the ability to land emotional impact. It becomes a showcase for really talented young performers performing a plot which you quickly come to realize isn't anywhere near as satisfying nor as entertaining or as funny or any of those things as the rest of those movies which have since been brought to the stage. And I had a nice enough time. I enjoyed myself at Clueless. It's a really easy watch. Its problems did not glare at me and disrupt me like they do in other shows, but I just wish that I had smiled more. I wish that I had laughed even at all. And I wish that I'd felt something, anything. And not every show has to have a substantial emotional impact. Some musicals get to be a milkshake, and that's fine. But this isn't a milkshake with any real flavour. This, unfortunately is milk. So let's talk about the plot of Clueless then. Our central protagonist is a young white blonde woman just to really push the boat out, whose name is Cher Horowitz. She was originally played on screen by Alicia Silverstone, and chances are you are familiar with the iconic yellow plaid outfit that she wore at the beginning of the film that she wears at the beginning of the stage musical. Now Cher is a very privileged teenager living with her mega lawyer father in a Beverly Hills mansion. She goes to high school with her friend Dion and they take under their wing a new student named Ty. They are going to try and help her navigate the turbulent adolescent existence, which it seems that Cher only really has one perspective of, which is a very sort of a rose tinted perspective given how wealthy and popular she is now. Cher, just like Jane Austen's Emma, enjoys playing matchmaker, whether that's for her teachers or for Ty, who she decides to set up with a very popular boy, a boy named Elton, a name which we learn via the lyrics of his introductory number, defies legitimate rhymes. And just like in any teen movie, the romantic attractions don't work out particularly neatly. Elton isn't interested in Tai. Tai likes someone else. Cher starts dating someone in the second act because she hasn't come to terms with feelings that she has for yet another different person. It's all very interconnected and messy until it isn't, the other key player here being Cher's former stepbrother named Josh. That is to say that their parents were married for a time aren't anymore. But her father is still supporting his academic study because he's trying to be a lawyer now. Cher and Josh sort of despise each other. I think I'm going to segue here into talking about some of the storytelling issues that I encountered with this show. As someone who has not seen the film, I'm given to understand because she tells us as much that these two are not on great terms. They have a sort of traditional sibling dynamic where they get under each other's skin. Skin. They can't really stand each other. He finds her vapid and ridiculous. And the problem that I had with that in the musical is the dynamic really isn't clear from the offset. There seemed to be far too much warmth, far too much instant chemistry between the two of them. And as a result of that, every subsequent interaction was a little difficult to place. And not that it's meant to be this major revelation when they begin to realize that they feel differently towards each other than they suspected, but when it's basically there from the start, you wonder what the whole point of even doing the show is. And while we're talking about storytelling issues here, that isn't necessarily the biggest. Because Cher, for much of the first act, is going around doing what she perceives to be good deeds. And, you know, she's overreaching and she's overstepping on more than one occasion. And she's trying to engineer people's lives on their behalf because everything in her world is meticulously organized and color coordinated, and everything is perfect and pretty. But in and amongst that, there are also a lot of very earnest and heartwarming things that she does. When Josh mentions offhand that he is struggling to connect with the slightly older lawyer interns who are working for Cher's father, she suggests that they're probably hungry and have been made to work very hard and haven't been fed well, and that Josh should bring them pizza and that that would get them to like him. And it works. She's really neither as vapid nor as thoughtless as the reckoning which comes at the end of the show, seems to suggest that she is. She isn't a character who we feel needs this great comeuppance. She's not Cady Heron at the start of the second act of Mean Girls. She's kind of Elle woods the whole way. Like, certainly there are things that she can learn about the world, but she's always been a nice person. Finally, when it comes to all of the other supporting characters and everything else that's happening at the high school. This is storytelling issue number three, and I feel as though I've mentioned this before in another show. We have a slightly smaller cast size here than you might see, certainly in the likes of Mean Girls, and it's one of many reasons why I think the show is actually quite capable of going on tour after its time in the West End and could do so quite neatly. But as a result of that, I don't know if we have enough people to illustrate the cliques at play in the high school ecosystem. Because when Ty arrives, Cher wants to acquaint her with the best class of students and encourages her to stay away from those who are beneath them. Except this is only represented by one skateboarding individual. And because we don't have that many people on stage, everyone is still at the same house party. And that group, a group which eventually comes to accept Tai and even suggests lyrically that they might ostracize Cher, although that is not really explored, nor are their feelings about her previous to that. That group seems to contain a whole array of high school characters, including like, anxious looking nerds who seem to walk amongst the popular kids. Like there simply aren't enough people on stage to depict a hierarchical sense of high school clique. Or if there are enough people on stage, then they just don't seem to bother. Which again, and this is the whole problem with the show, takes away a sense of meaning and a sense of impact, because it doesn't make a difference whether Thai becomes popular or not. Not at this school where like these eight people all have lunch together. Regardless. Let's carry on then and talk about the material. I always fear it's a little bit of a red flag when a screenwriter adapts their own work for the stage simply because writing for the screen and writing for the stage are two entirely different things. But I think this is a pretty good adapt. I think this is a pretty solid book. It's cute, it's charming, it incorporates the iconic lines which it needs to those which haven't been included as lyrics. We get a lot of whatever and as if. And speaking of the score, I think it's actually pretty terrific work. There are objectively a whole host of silly lyrics. And that House Party song towards the end of the first act is probably the worst house party song in a musical. And that is saying something. It does the same thing that the Halloween song in Be More Chill does, where it has these irreverent lyrics of the young characters singing like weird, doing a bunch of drugs. We're partying in the house. Like things that they wouldn't be self aware enough to say. The lyrics in many of the rest of the songs don't always behave like that. I think Elton's character does when he sings about himself and how wealthy and successful and privileged he is. But we don't necessarily get a sense of consistency about whether this is a world that we are sort of spoofing and mocking in a slightly irreverent and silly way, or whether the characters all sing earnestly, because Cher certainly does. And I enjoy the voice of a lot of these lyrics. It's adolescent and it's juvenile, but it doesn't feel patronizingly so. It doesn't feel inaccurate to these characters. It feels very rooted in the 90s. We have a whole song which is super catchy where they're singing she's all that and a bag of chips, which is repeated so many times. You would think it's referencing something from the film. A little bit of research seems to indicate to me it's not a specific reference reference to the film, but more so just to something that was said a lot in the 90s. And fun fact, that's also a lyric that essentially appears in Legally Blonde in the reprise of oh my God, you guys. I think right towards the end of the show, the ensemble sing Elves. All that and a side of fries. And I mean side of fries, bag of chips. Literally potato, potato. But you get the idea. I largely do enjoy the lyrics and I think the compositions are really great and really fun. I like the opening number. I think it's a banger. I like that we have a distinct sound between characters because every. Everything that Cher sings has a more of a fun, light pop vibe. Feeling 90s enough, feeling the right vibe, feeling very apart, interestingly enough, from Katie Tunstall's own music. Then you have the character of Josh, who is a little more angsty, who we often meet in a moment of frustration. So he sings more like boy bandy 90s pop rock style. He has one particular show stopping moment, actually, when he and the other legal interns have this kind of a boy band transformation. We've seen it done in a few shows now. Babies did this. And Juliet does this in a more overt way as he riffs on a bunch of legal terms singing about why he has reasonable doubts about the intentions of the young man who is taking Cher swing dancing. And that's a great number. It's a really winning concept. You have him and all of these other buttoned up Law student types suddenly breaking out and dancing, singing this kind of screamy pop rock song. He does a flip off of a table. It's explosive, it's dynamic. And then we go to the swing dancing and we sing a really generic. You're at a club and there's someone singing song which has a double meaning within the lyrics. But they do this in Pretty Woman. They do it in a whole bunch of shows. And it's just. It's basic. This is the problem, is we resort to choices that are occasionally a little basic. I'm also not sure the show is entirely settled in where it finds its sense of humor. It discards a couple of really great punch lines. There is a moment in the whole introductory number where Cher indicates a framed picture of her mother, who, she tells us, died in a freak liposuction accident. Which, you know, circumstances aside, is objectively meant to be funny. There's a similar line in the woods about the baker whose parents died in a baking accident. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, also makes a joke about a ridiculous death. Listen, there's a long, proud history of that kind of a comic moment. This happens in the middle of a song. And if that gets a little chuckle, what happens immediately afterwards baffled me a little bit because the next line is, that sucks, I guess. Or life sucks, I guess. But it carries straight, straight through. It doesn't feel like a deliberate punch line. But if the concept is her mother dying in a freak liposuction accident and the next line is that sucks, then that's a punch line. That's surely there deliberately, but it isn't structured in such a way that it can be one. If we don't have laugh out loud comedy throughout, however, we have an awful lot of wit. We have an awful lot of charm, much of which comes from the cast. I'll talk to you about the performances shortly. But I do want to say a little bit about the staging first and the other creative elements which bring this all together. So this has been directed by Rachel Kavanagh, who is having an objectively, very busy year bringing films to the stage as musicals. She's going to be working on A Knight's Tale very shortly, and I think it's staged and directed with a considerable amount of whimsy and charm. I do think there's a little bit of conflict present about whether to do it in an entirely earnest way or a more irreverent one. But so many of the creative choices, particularly the design choices, I think are really brilliant, brilliant. The costume design is by Paloma Young. We very quickly see Cher's extensive wardrobe, and we see these brilliant outfits, and she's changing between iconic outfits throughout the show. And there are so many different costumes, many of which not directly to the original film, but it's so deliciously 90s, and it's vibrant and it's colorful and it's stylish, and it's very Beverly Hills. The set design is from Akiko Susie McAdams, and for the most part, everything is staged within the context of Cher's Beverly Hills mansion home. And it sort of expands and it morphs into other settings. There's a sort of a suggestion of a palm tree print across the walls so that it can feel like inside and outside. Various different things are brought on in a very clever but a very economical way. It feels like a set, like I mentioned before, entirely ready to tour around the country. It doesn't feature, like a revolve or slick automation or huge video screens. What we do have is a lot of different pieces of furniture which turn into cars, which is done in a very witty way and is done in a brilliantly innovative way in of their design and in terms of how they are implemented. And usually gets a good laugh when Josh is slumped on the sofa and she's trying to convince him to take her out driving so she can practice for her test. All she need do is reveal the sofa turning into a car, and he has no choice, and he has to do it begrudgingly. That's brilliant. The problem I had with the staging is a lot of it does feel a little small scale. It sort of feels like the touring version of what it could have been in the West End. An example of this, the first shot we see see is Cher's bedroom. She's in the bed. It's on an angle to the audience, and Lucy, the housekeeper, is present on stage simply to turn the angle of the bed slightly and then walk off stage. And this is the very first thing that happens before anyone says anything, before the lights really come up. But we see this moment of just, like, adjust the bed and leave. It seems like something that might be happening in a tech rehearsal where the bed isn't turning properly. And I assume that's not what I was seeing because they didn't have a revolve on that stage. I assume that is just part of the blocking, that Lucy, played by Imelda Warren Green. That track begins. Begins with turn the bed and then leave. And if you don't have automation and if you don't have revolving Set pieces, then just have the bed be facing forwards. Yes, it's very the beginning of Hairspray, but if that's what you want to start on, like, you don't have a set piece that can do that. So don't lie to me and try to convince me that you do. It looks silly to have her walk off the stage like that. That's the problem. A way that you could fix that without having set pieces that revolve and do clever stuff like that by themselves is to lean a little further into the idea of. Of everyone doing stuff for Cher and her having all of these people around in order to make her life as privileged and beautiful as it is, while she is telling us that she's the one who's really running everything and she's so busy holding the entire house together. But again, to do that, I feel like you'd need slightly more people on stage. And speaking of the people on stage, let's finish then by talking about the performances of this cast. Now the shining light of this entire show, Emma Flynn, who is playing Cher. What a remarkable star making performance this is. She is sensational. This is a proper star is born on the West End stage moment. She is incredible in this show. She deserves more substantial material. You watch this performance and you think, when is this girl doing a production of Legally Blonde? Because she would be perfect. She is so likable, which may even be a problem as she heads towards this big reckoning. We're meant to feel as though she has a lesson to learn. She is so endearing. She is so naturally funny. Alongside being a brilliant singer and actress and dancer. The comedy is hilarious. When she puts on these comically tall shoes that she can't really walk in because she's trying to act seductive around her boyfriend. The comedy of her naivety comes across so brilliantly and clearly as she's falling down in these shoes, as she's draping herself across the bed and nearly falling off off the other side. She is completely winning and hysterical and charming. It's one of the most exciting performances from, like, a new rising star I've seen in a long time. This girl is going to be huge. She's remarkable. I even think she may elevate a lot of this material. And I think the production is really lucky to have her. And right there alongside her, you have Keelan McCauley playing Josh. Also hugely endearing. Very charming. That Reasonable Doubt song that I mentioned when he is fronting this kind of angsty pop rock boy band moment that's brilliant, terrific pop ready vocals. Really lands the comedy moments when he gets them. I'm not entirely convinced by the early characterization and who exactly Josh is meant to be. And I think because Cher is such a personality and so lives in her own carefully curated world and is so meticulously performed, I think we need a stronger sense of exactly who he is and who he is in contrast to her. Because at the moment it feels a little like he's playing the straight man to her cartoon character, like he's playing a comparatively more normal guy because she lives a ridiculous privileged existence and he's baffled by it. And perhaps that works better on screen, but here everyone's a little more animated and a little more vibrant because of the nature of musical theater and everyone bursting into song and doing these high energy 90s dance routines from choreographer. And because he has an eventually cartoonish trajectory, he may as well bring more of that energy at the beginning exactly who Josh is meant to be or. Or if he is completely exhausted by her, then that needs to be dialed up as well because at the moment it feels like he just tolerates her with a little mild indifference. I do however, think he is another very exciting emerging talent with a whole host of skills including but not limited to flipping sideways over a table. Next, I want to shout out to Staples of the supporting cast, Ryan O'Donnell and Imelda Warren Green. They, between the two of them play eight roles, I would say taking on all of the adult roles. But Imelda also plays a student at one point as well, and they are chameleons on that stage. I didn't recognize Imelda, whose work I have enjoyed many times before in Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder. Didn't recognize her until her second scene in this show. Thought that Ryan O'Donnell was at least two people until halfway through the second act. The distinct characterizations that they bring to each of these roles are so, so brilliant. They are putting in the work to make sure that this story moves forward, forwards. And they are also hamming it up with considerable comedy chops. Back to the younger supporting cast. There's a lot of really great talent there. China Rose Frederick is very funny as Diongi kind of disappears from the show for extended periods at a time, but we enjoy her a lot when she's there. Ramona Lewis Malley is very sweet as Ty. I wish the material afforded us a little more of an insight into her perspective on everything that's happening because it has the possibility of being being just a little more heartbreaking because she arrives as a new student and Cher sort of enforces this personality change and this change in her aesthetic, and she immediately starts talking to a guy and it's clear they have a lot in common, and Cher pulls the two of them apart. But despite Ramona's heartfelt and charming performance, our relationship to Ty because the material remains superficial. Then projecting confidence and charisma, you have Elton, played by Max Mirza, landing all of his material very well, and Isaac J. Lewis, who plays Christian, entering in the second act like a cat camp chorus boy from Guys and Dolls. A brilliantly well characterized, very witty performance. And those have been my thoughts about Clueless the Musical currently playing at the Trafalgar Theatre in the West End. A cute show, a charming show, a nice enough show with a really talented cast, giving dynamic performances, offering an entertainment factor certainly, but not necessarily equipped because of its material to stand up there alongside the other screen to stage musical adaptations from the same show genre. Of course, whether or not the show will go on to enjoy the same success is something that we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you have seen Clueless the Musical on stage in London already, let us all know what you thought of it in the comments section down below. Thank you for listening to this review. If you enjoyed, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming reviews or follow me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have have a Stagey Day for ten more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.