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Why is HEATHERS closing in London? | Which musical is coming next (and is it Mean Girls?...)
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Mickey Jo
Needless to say, for any fans of the musical Heathers, today's video will be less big fun and more small sad. Or I guess small fun or big sad. Hold on a minute. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a theatre critic, pundit, content creator based here in the uk and today we are going to be talking about the recent announcement that the current London production of the musical Heathers will end its run on on 3rd September at the other Palace Theatre. This news will be devastating to some people. Some people have been anticipating this for a little while. It raises an awful lot of questions. Perhaps some people have only recently become aware of Heathers in London and are wondering why it's closing. Perhaps some people are wondering what's going to be coming next at the other Palace Theatre. And if you've really got your ear to the ground, then you might be wondering what big Broadway transfer that we haven't yet had in the West End might now be looking to make its way over. All of this and more will be discussed in today's video. If you enjoy this one, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel for many more videos coming very regularly. I talk about theatre news, I review the shows that I've been invited to go and see, and I make vlogs where I take you with me to the theater. If that sounds like something you would enjoy, make sure you subscribe. But for now, let's talk about the graduation of Heathers. So let's start with the details and why this is actually happening. Because Heathers has had a really great life in London, a life that people may not have anticipated when it had a short lived off Broadway run. This is a show that didn't make it to Broadway, but on the back of its cast recording and on the back of some bootleg clips of Candy Store. Let's be honest, it became hugely popular with theatre fans worldwide. There was a little workshop version at the other Palace Theatre and then eventually a full production at the other Palace Theatre was announced starring fan favourite Carrie Hope Fletcher, along with a bunch of other rising stars who have since gone on to huge things. People like Jodie Steele, people like Sophie Isaacs and Dominic Anderson and Chris Jung and Jamie Moscato. So many stars, that cast was absolutely stacked. Even the understudies, people like Lauren Drew and Charlotte Giaconelli and Olivia Moore. And this production did exactly what it was supposed to. It had a successful Off West End run. If you're considering the Other palace to be an off West End theatre, which honestly, it is. But the rules About West End vs Off West End are so dubious that it's very hard to classify what something is specifically. In any case, it transferred to a bigger, more central London theatre that's definitely a West End house, the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where it had a decent run, it managed to build up an enormous fan base. People became really obsessed with this cast and with this production. It did everything it needed to, and when it ended, they launched a UK tour that traveled all around the country with a new cast of performers who would go on to become fan favorites in their own right. And Pre Pandemic, before the industry became slightly unusual, this would be considered a really traditional life cycle for a show, right? It has an off West End life, it transfers to the West End and after production closes, then it tours. This is what shows are supposed to do, cut to the Pandemic and the end of the world. Theatres have to shut down. And as theaters are slowly beginning to reopen in London and in the West End, some shows are ready to welcome back audiences sooner than others. And there are a handful of theatres like the Shaftesbury and like the Theatre Royal Haymarket that allow smaller productions to go into those venues before the shows that were due to return there. And Juliet and Only Fools and Horses, respectively, are ready to come back. And so Heather's to the Theatre Royal Haymarket, unexpectedly, with a new cast, including Jordan, Luke gage, Frances Maylie McCann, Christina Bennington, Lauren Ward, alongside returning cast member Jody Steele. And if I'm remembering rightly, during that early portion of the run, we were still wearing masks in theatres and I believe we had socially distanced audiences as well. Now, shortly after this, it's announced that Heathers will be returning back to its original home at the Other Palace. This comes under a little bit of criticism because the Other palace, being a smaller London venue, makes it uniquely situated for developing emerging shows. The kind of shows that are still building a name for themselves but don't yet have an enormous fan base or the kind of name recognition that would allow them to sell a bigger venue, something like an Operation Mincemeat or Ride or the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And the Other palace has always had this mantra about being the home of new musicals. So for a show at this point that has had two limited runs in a West End venue to be returning back to this smaller space feels less like it's supporting a new British musical and more like it's doing something that's guaranteed to make a certain amount of money. However, at this point, we were still emerging out of the pandemic. It was still very difficult to produce theatre, and if there was anything that could run and be successful, it was hard to dismiss that with so many shows closing and struggling, it's difficult not to get behind something that is successful and something that was bringing in new young musical theatre audiences, which is hugely important. I would say in the last few years, there are few shows that have brought quite as many young actors, adults into the theater as Heather's. And say what you will about the show, that's a great thing. So Heather's returned to the Other Palace Theatre this time around. In the cast were Jacob Fowler, Hannah Lowther, Lizzie B, who had done the Workshop version but hadn't been in the show since finally getting to play the role of Martha Dunstock in a fully staged version of the show. And every time Heathers has moved venue, it has always found these new fans and those fans have made fan favorites of the performers in those casts, which is also great because Heathers has been a significant employer of drama school graduates. Some really early career performers have had some of their professional debuts and their earliest really big shows in Heathers. So at this point, Heathers is running at the Other palace, and after a little while they announced that the tour is going to come back as well, but it's going to tour while it's still running at the Other palace in London. Now, this was surprising to me because if we cast our minds back 10 years, let's say not many shows were successful enough to be able to sustain enough audience interest for a West End production and a tour simultaneously, it was the mark of a very successful show. If they were launching a tour while they were still in town, because usually what you'd have is a show that would run in the West End and when it would close, then it would tour, right? But if something's running in London and it's popping up regionally at the same time, it means there are enough people who want to see that show to justify two concurrent productions, which is a bigger deal here in the UK than anywhere else in the world, because the UK is very small, and to travel down even from some of the furthest points of the uk, it takes a little bit of time and it can be expensive, but it's not impossible. It's not like in the us, where to get over from the other side of the country is a significant undertaking. And often when these shows do tour they will visit some venues that are quite close to London, so you would think that the audience would already be saturated. So like I said, it shows a tremendous amount of success. Nowadays we're seeing this a little bit more. Jersey Boys is another show that is running in town in a small theater in the West End, it should be said, while also doing two week tour stops around the country. So this does prove a certain amount of success. And there are two thoughts that I have about this because I feel with Heathers and Jersey Boys, I don't want to pick on one individual producer here or one individual show. I think if your show is popular enough that you can run in London and sustain tours to big venues, big touring houses, sometimes doing two week stints, like I said, then you can probably be selling a bigger theater in London than the Trafalgar or the Other Palace. And this is only an issue because those smaller venues in London, like the Other palace, like the Trafalgar, like the Fortune or the Ambassadors, which we do not have enough of, we do not have those smaller sort of mid sized venues like there are many of in the Off Broadway world. They are so important, they are so valuable to these developing shows. And when you have a successful, long running, popular show that is doing an extended run in those spaces and seems like it's never going to close, then we are losing two entry points of new shows into the West End. Especially with a space like the Other palace, which like I said, has always been described as the home of new musical theatre. However, like I've already said, it has been a slow walk out of the pandemic. It's been challenging financial times. And if Heather's in the main house was what was keeping the lights on for the Other palace, allowing them to have other new musicals and workshops and readings and concerts in the studio space downstairs, then that's a good thing as well. But the question we're really asking here is why Heathers is closing. And I do think this tour has something to do with it. Because Heathers is a popular show, but it's popular with a young adult audience. And for something to be ongoingly financially successful, you need to have a broad appeal and you need to be able to appeal to the people who are going to buy a lot of tickets. And this isn't to say that young adults and teenage fans and young fans haven't been buying a lot of tickets to see Heathers, but they don't command quite as much ticket buying power as an older audience or as a tourist audience might not to mention that it's harder for them to travel into London. And when you have the tour going around the country and you're faced with the choice of seeing Heathers locally or traveling down to London to see it, you're going to see it locally, I presume. Meaning that as it continued to extend and extend in London and more and more people who wanted to see it had seen it, having the tour going around as well was just further diminishing the potential interest that there was. But all of this is making it sound like Heathers hasn't been a huge success. Circling back to what I said at the start of this section, Heathers has done fantastically in London. It ran long enough that there was a professional pro shot, filmed recording of it that you can go and watch, immortalizing the show's material, immortalizing this production and the performers who were in it at that time. We've already seen in the years that follow how much a professional recording like Legally Blonde had can go on to provide a musical with years of future audiences. So many people will still keep discovering Heathers in the years after this production has closed because of that professional recording. Like I'd mentioned, it has launched so many fantastic performers and given them fan bases and great career opportunities, and it's brought a lot of young audiences into the theatre who, because of seeing Heathers, will go on to discover other shows and become the next generation of theatre goers, which is something we need to be curating. That isn't to say that while it's been in London, this show hasn't been involved in a certain amount of controversy financially behind the scenes, and there are certainly rumors that have circulated about this production. There are some things that I have been told about this production, but without a full understanding of the financial workings of all of it and everything else that was going on in what is still a very difficult time to produce theatre. It's very difficult to cast aspersions or cast stones. Maybe a couple years ago on YouTube, that's something I would have done more readily. But I've been party to a lot of conversations in the time since in which I have learned it's not always that simple. In fact, it's rarely that simple. So, like I said in the beginning, Heathers is going to be closing on the 3rd of September. They're not closing early, they're just not extending the show. So it was extending for months at a time. And earlier this week, while I was at the Edinburgh Fringe, they announced that this was going to have been the final extension and Heathers would be closing as scheduled 3rd September. My thoughts are with all of the cast and crew who will no longer have employment, as well as with all the fans of this show who will be very affected by this news as well, I'm sure. But when the musical theatre gods close a door, they open a window. So we're also going to talk about what happens next. So given that I've talked so much about what valuable space the Other Palaces is, there is now a huge amount of intrigue about what could be going there next. I know there are people who want to see the return of some of their previous shows like Amelie, but I want nothing more than for a smaller, emerging new musical to be able to go into that space and have a fuller production. There are some great shows that have been at the Turbine Theatre in the last few years. That's a theatre in Battersea that is also run by the Other palace artistic director Paul Taylor Mills. Shows like Halls that just had another great development run that sold really well. But I'm a cheerleader that had two runs at the Turbine Theatre. Eugenius was there recently. A lot of great shows that deserve a slightly bigger stage than that very intimate space can afford them. Other news that has come out this week is that Cake will also be making a return. Now this is another show produced by Paul Taylor Mills. So many people were speculating with Cake, teasing an announcement that they were going to be announcing they were the next show at the Other Palace. However, they're not. They're doing a very brief stint at the Lyric Theatre in the West End. The Lyric Theatre, where Aspects of Love has closed early, ahead of Hadestown, opening there next year. So Cake is going to be doing a handful of performances there, but not at the Other palace, which I think has surprised people. In any case, September 3rd is rolling around pretty soon, so it shouldn't be too long before we hear what is coming next for this venue. I'm very excited and I'd love to know what shows you would like to see there. What do you think should be the next show to go into the Other Palace? Comment your suggestions down below. And while I have no further intel or speculation about what that show might be, we're not finished just yet. Because I teased at the beginning of this video there was a particular transfer of a Broadway musical that might now be picking up steam. I am talking about Mean Girls. So if there are two musicals people have been asking me about for a few years, wanting to know when they would come to the West End, it's been Beetlejuice and Mean Girls because there were actually rumors of a West End Mean Girls transfer years back. And Sonja Friedman is attached to this show. She's a British producer who produces theatre on both sides of the Atlantic. But for whatever reason, we haven't had the show yet, and I have reason to believe that we're going to be seeing it very soon, which would make a lot of sense. The timing all works out because after the Broadway production, they made some changes to the show for the US tour and that first leg of it has finished. It's now continuing on as a non equity tour, I believe, the details of which I'm not too sure about because that's a very American concept I'm not particularly familiar with. So I assume they're using a different set and it's a completely different cast involved, but someone will be able to let me know in the comments, I'm sure. In any case, with that initial US tour being done, it feels like they now have the opportunity to turn their attention towards the United Kingdom and finally bring the show to London. Not only that, but with Heather's closing, is this what Mean Girls have been waiting for? There's a subtle difference between the two shows, but marketing is everything in the West End. These are still very fragile times for building an audience, and what you don't want is direct competition from a show that has an identical fan base, tonal similarities, and the same marketing idea of three Mean Girls in a high school environment. So I would not be surprised whatsoever if the producers of Mean Girls had been waiting for Heathers to close in the West End before bringing the show over. And that's why I'm mentioning it as part of this video. Not only that, but the Mean Girls musical is being adapted for film, which, if Matilda is anything to go by, should be a huge box office support. So a 2024 opening to coincide with the film release might be some very clever producing indeed. I mean, if I'd been involved with this show, I feel like the most serendipitous thing they could have done would have been to come into the Savoy Theatre where Sunset Boulevard is about to open. That would have coincided with Heather's finishing in London. We'd get Mean Girls opening almost immediately and they could set their official opening night for, wait for it, October 3rd. How precious is that? How perfect. I mean, come on, they couldn't have foreseen all of this happening, but like an October 3rd opening? I just think that's cute. Although it doesn't fall on a Wednesday this year. So, you know, finally I will say that while my hair is not quite big enough to be full of secrets, I have heard from multiple sources that the kind of things that would usually happen in anticipation of a show opening in the West End may already be happening. So don't be surprised if we're hearing Mean Girls news for the West End very soon. In the meantime, there are a great many other brilliant shows still running in London. Speaking of the Other palace, specifically, there is a new musical called In Clay which is having a concert on 21st August at the other Palace. I'm actually doing a post show Q and A with them. This was a brilliant new musical that I saw at the Vault Festival and if you want to support new British musical theatre writing, this is a fantastic show to go and see. They've got a dynamite cast of performers and we're going to have a brilliant discussion afterwards talking about making art and creativity and how a musical like this actually comes together. If that's something that you're interested in, come along to the Other Palace Theatre on 21 August. In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed today's video. If you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel for plenty more stage videos coming very soon. And if you have any other questions about the West End right now or about Heather's closing, drop them in the comments section down below and I will do my best to answer. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. 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