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Why is MEAN GIRLS closing in the West End? | News recap and rumours of the next musical at the Savoy
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Mickey Jo
She doesn't even go here. And by she, I mean the West End production of Mean Girls the musical. And by here I mean the Savoy Theatre after June 8, 2025 RIP Rest in Pink oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic and content creator here on social media. And today we are going to be discussing the perhaps bombshell West End announcement which dropped earlier today, that the production of Mean Girls, the musical, which arrived last summer, will be closing prior to really the beginning of this summer, playing its final performance at London's Savoy Theatre on June 8, 2025, around about a year after it opened. And this is news that I think is perhaps surprising and unsurprising at the same time. Unsurprising because if you were paying any attention to the show's recent ticket sales. Now we don't frustratingly disclose grosses on a weekly basis or at all here in the West End compared with the practice on Broadway, but if you took a look at at how the show seemed to be selling by looking at its availability, the writing was kind of on the pink wall. Not only that, but I have heard about multiple other shows eyeing up the Savoy Theatre amidst a real in availability of theaters in the West End. There are new shows that want to come in, there are productions which want to transfer, but a lot of musicals have opened in the last few years. I'm looking at you, Moulin Rouge. I'm looking at you, Mean Girls. I'm looking at you Back to the Future and sort of sat down in those theaters for a prolonged amount of time, meaning we aren't seeing as much turnover in terms of new musical productions. But you may also be very surprised by this news if, like me, you suspected that Mean Girls was going to be a really big commercial hit in the West End. And given the West End's propensity for enjoying musicals based on films more so than our counterparts in Broadway audiences, this perhaps ought to have been a really long runner. But for whatever reason, it wasn't. And that is what we are going to be talking about today. Why is it that Mean Girls is closing in the West End? What is the official news? What else has been announced on the back of this and which are the two other musical productions which I have heard will be playing at the Savoy Theatre before the end of 2025? Stay tuned to the very end of this theatre news recap. To find out now, as always, make sure to comment down below with your own thoughts and feelings about the Mean Girls closure. Did you see it in the West End? Did you see this coming? Do you plan to see it again before the show closes at the beginning of June? And of course, if you want to stay up to date with all of the theatre news both in the West End and on Broadway and occasionally beyond the two, make sure you are subscribed right here to my theatre themed YouTube channel or following me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let's talk about it Mean Girls Closing in the West End why? So I think it's important to start here with a little bit of backstory. Mean Girls obviously is a musical, a stage musical adaptation of the hugely popular 2004 film, which still has a lot of enduring familiarity and generational relevance. It first appeared on the Broadway stage in, I believe, 2018 and it was one of multiple shows which closed as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, ending its performances in March of 2020. Mean Girls never officially reopened. It did launch a national tour and continues to tour in what I believe is now a non equity production around the US and Canada. But a little while after the Broadway closure, a new film adaptation was created. A film adaptation off the stage musical adaptation of the original film starring Renee Rapp. This was a movie musical of Mean Girls and many of the rewrites done to the material were then also seen in a reworked version of the musical, which opened last summer in in the West End at the Savoy, its very first West End performance having taken place on 5 June and the period of Pandemic shutdown notwithstanding. Given that the show opened on Broadway in 2018 and given that there was always going to be an obvious appeal for it here in the uk, like its West End transfer seemed inevitable, it's surprising that it took as many years as it did to make it here. And that's not just because of the pandemic. I think producer Sonja Friedman may have been waiting for the very popular teen musical Heathers to leave London. Heathers and Mean Girl having an awful lot in common. Not just their target demographic, but also a lot of the concept, with a more relatable teenage girl befriending a group of three Mean Girls who have extraordinary power within the school ecosystem. They even have writers in common, for crying out loud. And we saw an interesting phenomenon when Heathers finally did close on its second run at the other Palace Theatre heading off on a UK tour. We had announcements of Mean Girls Coming to the West End, Clueless, Coming to the West End, which very recently opened, and Fangirls heading to the Lyric Hammersmith. And it seemed on the face of it like the producers had made the very sensible decision to wait for an opportune moment. It must be disappointing then for the show to have only run for a year in the West End, and perhaps that may be considered a respectable run in some circles. It takes a shorter amount of time to recoup an investment in London compared with New York. But as I mentioned just a moment ago, we have become very used to seeing these kind of musicals, musicals based on popular film titles running for considerably longer in London than they did in the us. The likes of Pretty Woman, of Doubtfire, Back to the Future, Heather's also being an example of this. And yet Mean Girls Broadway run, which isn't remembered as having been particularly successful, will end up being around twice the duration of the West End production. Now let me read a little from the official press release which was sent to me earlier today. Award winning Mean Girls to complete west end run on 8 June 2025 ahead of UK tour in 2026 the award winning that they're referring to is their recent big win for Best New Musical at the Watson Stage Awards. The West End production will complete its run at the Savoy Theatre on Sunday 8 June at the end of the current booking period ahead of a UK 2026 tour. Details and casting will be announced at a later date. And this is potentially why this closing announcement in the West End is arriving a little bit late in the day, because this is another reason why you may not have been surprised. They hadn't announced a new cast for the West End. They hadn't announced an extension. We are only a few months away from the end of the current booking period. A lot of the current principal cast had talked on their social media about the fact that they weren't going to be staying with the show, but the lack of announcement about Mean Girls ongoing life had started to look a little bit conspicuous. The reason to delay announcement? Possibly they were waiting to see if the Watson Stage Award win gave them any kind of a box office boost. Possibly they were waiting to see if they picked up any surprise Olivier Award nominations and they were nominated. Tom Zander was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, but the show itself was not nominated for Best New Musical, which must have hurt yet. Another reason for the timing of this announcement, however, may have been confirmation of the show's 2026 UK tour. And this is good News. This is really good news. For those of you who live further away from London in the UK and didn't get a chance to see Mean Girl, get a chance to see Mean Girls, it is likely to be visiting a theater much closer to where you live. It also means that a new set of performers are going to get to go into the show. I'm sure there are many people who weren't necessarily available to audition for Mean Girls when it first came to London. They may have been doing six, they may have been doing Heathers, they may have been doing Clueless, they may have been doing Fangirls. With so many shows with similar casting brackets, it precludes a lot of talented people from even being able to be considered for the production. And you know, they didn't get a year two cast in the West End, which many performers may have been hoping hoping to join. Now they can audition for the tour and we are probably, and I would assume we are unlikely to see many already any of the West End cast doing the touring production. Maybe Tom Zander would do it. He's a really fantastic Damien. He looks to be having so much fun on stage as they all do, honestly. But especially if he went on to win the Olivier Award, I could see him doing the UK tour. While we're talking about awards, actually, I should also point out that Elena Gyazi, who plays Gretchen, won Best Supporting Actress in a Musical at the Black British Theatre Awards. And honestly, there is not that much more that this press release has to tell us. The show has apparently been seen by over 350,000 people in the West End. Rush Rate tickets will continue to be available at £25 for every mean Girls performance via the Todaytix app. The remaining Mean Girls Access performance is a British sign language performance on Saturday 10th May 2025 at 2.30pm and there's an interesting little statement here about Mean Girls impact in pop culture. It says Tina Fey's hilarious and relatable portrayal of high school life struck a chord with audiences around the globe and the film's whip smart satire, icon catchphrases and unforgettable characters made it a phenomenon that remains a cultural touchstone to this day. And I agree. So why is it that the show, after just one year in the West End, is closing? Well, here are some thoughts. The thing is, I think even though there is a significant market for Mean Girls and I think it's a bigger market than there is for Heathers, and I think it's a bigger market than there is for Clueless, because I think Mean Girls as a film is bigger across generations than either of those. Neither show has had to sell for an extended period. A venue the size of the Savoy. Heather's running for a long time at the Other palace, transferring briefly to the Haymarket, going back to the Other palace, going back to the Haymarket, going to at Soho Place, touring around the country has not seen consistently sold out runs and experienced its longest life at the Other palace, which is a considerably smaller venue than the likes of the Savoy. Clueless, meanwhile, seems set to continue running after Mean Girls closes in the West End. But that won't mean it will have outlasted it, because Clueless only began performances in February of this year. So the question will be whether Clueless can make it to next February and beyond, even if it does the Trafalgar, also smaller than the Savoy. And so in all of this, we haven't really answered the question of whether there is enough of a market for a big West End production of these types of shows. Does the audience exist there to sustain these kind of musicals? And I'm not saying it is only young audiences, only teenagers who want to go to these shows. Because Mean Girls as a film was released in 2004, the people who were fans of it at the time grew up and will be nostalgic about it the same way that people are nostalgic about Pretty Woman, the same way that people are nostalgic about Mrs. Doubtfire and Moulin Rouge and go and see those shows. But is there a difference, I'm wondering, in going to see Pretty Woman because you remember how much you loved the film and going to see something like Mean Girls that might feel inherently a little more juvenile? Do you get a group of older women, perhaps a group of ladies from the office, perhaps a hen knight, going to see Mean Girl the same way that they would have gone to see A Pretty Woman. And I feel as though the answer is no. What you may get more of at Mean Girls is parents, mothers taking their daughters to see the show. But also I think it will resonate hugely, does resonate hugely with a lot of younger fans. And younger fans, as we know, can't sustain a West End production by themselves. If six had only ever been popular with teenagers, it wouldn't have run as long as it has. It needs to cross over into something that everyone enjoys and is aware of. Shows that have been a little more reliant on that teen audience. Meanwhile, like Heather's at the Other palace, like, why am I so single? Perhaps even at The West End really reaching a younger demographic there seem to always be finite and that's not surprising because teenagers have neither the time nor the money to go and see big, expensive West End productions midweek. Hell, it's also possible that Mean Girls isn't actually as popular with that younger audience as we think that it is. I mean, 2004, the original film, unless they have discovered it since it might be a similar thing to me not knowing Clueless particularly well because it's a film which entered the world the same year that I did in 1995. Maybe it's actually more my generation and a few years above me who are excited and going to see Mean Girls on stage because they remember loving the original film. But still, it doesn't feel like a whole family show. In the same way it doesn't feel like a show that dads are going to be as happy to go to, which is where something like Mrs. Doubtfire was able to excel. It's not really a romantic date night show like Pretty Woman could be like Moulin Rouge undeniably is. And there we see it kind of falling between these easier to sell and market categories. And I do want to shout out the marketing campaign because I think Mean Girls has done some really excellent work riffing on all of the popular lines and catchphrases from the film and on the nostalgia of all of that, and getting involved with as many press opportunities as they have the big pink carpet that they did for the opening, having the cast go out and perform for the Christmas lights being turned on at the Strand outside the Savoy Theater. There have been so many performance opportunities. Georgina Castle has been singing World Burn around London. London. They did West End Live really early in the show's life. It's going to be a real shame if they don't perform at West End Live this year, as I suspect they may not, because that's going to fall just a few weeks after the production has closed. So I don't think this is one of those instances, as we've identified in the past, where marketing is to blame. I think inherently Mean Girls may be a harder show to sell to audiences than we thought. But of course, as we've also seen before, there may be other external factors. I talked about the in availability of theatres and I teased two other musical productions which are potentially on their way to the Savoy Theatre before the end of the year. Let's talk about those now. With these not having been announced, I have to acknowledge that this is just rumor and speculation, but it's what I have been hearing and it may not necessarily even be a factor in the closing of Mean Girls at the Savoy. This may only be happening because Mean Girls is closing early and it may not be that these exciting new shows have necessarily pushed it out of the door. This is something that happens a little more on Broadway where theater owners see the opportunity to bring in a new tenant that they think may sell better than the current one. Beetlejuice was famously pushed out of the Winter Garden Theatre in favor of the Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster led revival of the Music Man. Famously the only controversial thing to come out of that production of the Music Man. But there are two productions, both musicals, which I hear are heading to the Savoy this year. The first is another based on a film, Burlesque. Now, Burlesque has had sold out runs regionally for its world premiere production of a brand new musical stage adaptation of the iconic film starring Cher and Christina Aguilera. Featuring a lot of performance. It really makes sense as a stage property. Which isn't to say that they have had the smoothest run up to the West End thus far. And again, everything that I say about this is alleged and rumor and hearsay. Nothing here is official, but what I have heard is that there has been a certain amount of chaos behind the scenes, some of which spilt over into social media with a little bit of a feud emerging between performers and creatives, other details of which never seemed to become public, but which I heard about from multiple different sources. What I hear is that it's going to be heading to the Savoy for a summer run after they struggled to secure the London Coliseum. They wanted that for this summer, but the Great Gatsby ended up happening instead. And potentially we may see a production of Burlesque with a new creative team and a lot of new casting. This may be very different to the version of the show that has already been performed regionally. Is that because of personality conflicts between the producers, the creatives, the creatives and the cast asked, who's to say? What I will say is expect that announcement to come very soon because that's the thing that I think was really rushing this. You know, Mean Girls didn't have to announce that they were closing, but Burlesque really has to get on sale if they want to sell tickets before the summer. They need a long run up to do that. Although to their credit, tickets did sell pretty damn quickly for their runs in Manchester and in Scotland. So you could also assume that it might sell real fast. But I did say two musicals at The Savoy. And, and this one's interesting because I think the Savoy Theatre has such a personality in its attachment to this famous iconic luxury hotel. The Savoy Hotel, when Plaza Suite was there with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick made sense. When Dream Girls was there, glitzy made sense. The same with Pretty Woman, the same with Legally Blonde, with Funny Girl. Even a sort of an evening of class and decadence. Even Sunset Boulevard, which was a very different vibe. As you walked into a very dimly lit and smog filled auditorium, it still felt prestigious and fancy. What it doesn't feel is quite as warm and cozy and family friendly as the next show may be looking for in its West End home. Which is why I didn't think that this particular musical, which we've been hearing about for a very, very long time, would end up at the Savoy. I thought it would end up somewhere like the Adelphi. But I think Back to the Future surprised everyone by extending through to January of next year. Now a January extension does sort of feel like a final extension, though. Haven't officially said that yet. In any case, the Adelphi is not available this year. And producer Sonja Friedman, who also produces Mean Girls, has said that this particular musical is set to open in 2025. I'm talking about the much anticipated Paddington Bear musical. I don't know if that's officially what it's called. I know it very recently had a workshop. I heard that it was very charming. I believe Luke shepherd is directing. You may know his work from and Juliet and the recent revival of Starlight Express here in London, as well as the Little Big Things. A brilliantly mental creative who I think will do very good work on Paddington. I hear that the puppetry, I think it's puppetry, however, they bring Paddington to life, I hear is thrilling and beautiful. And I also hear that at this workshop they really cherished the opinions of children that they had invited to see the show. They may even have told all of the adults to leave the room and asked the children in attendance what they thought of the presentation, which is exactly what you should be doing when you're developing this kind of a show. And honestly, even if Paddington is not a great musical, this could run for years because Paddington Bear as a concept, as a piece of intellectual property, is huge in the United Kingdom. Paddington is a star, he's an icon, he's beloved. His films have been performing well at the box office. A Paddington Bear musical with a score written by Tom Fletcher of McFly. It's so quintessentially British. It's so what it seems like family audiences would want right now. I think this could be huge. And so it makes sense that Mean Girl's not doing particularly well if you are the producer of both shows, that you kind of land the plane on that one, send it around on a UK tour, see what happens to make some kind of a theater available for Paddington. Does Paddington make sense at the Savoy? We will have to wait and see. It feels a little bit unusual to me, but we have a real scarcity of theaters, so it's not like there's that much choice. Obviously, this is something I'm very excited to see on stage. I anticipate this being being really, really big. And in a year of very few new musicals, particularly almost no British musicals arriving in London, this seems set to be next year's Olivier Award winner. That's before we even decide this year's Olivier Award winners, but that is how big I think Paddington is going to be. I think this little bear is going to be a juggernaut. And that is also everything that I know about the Savoy Theatre in 2025. A little bit more insight into why a successful show like Mean Girls is closing after just a year year in the West End. There is still a lot to look forward to. There are still going to be a few more months of performances. And, you know, this is a nicer closing announcement than most because this cast, who presumably were contracted for a year coming to the end of their contract, many of them would have been leaving the show anyway. No one is necessarily losing work unexpectedly, except for those who perhaps had been hoping to stay on and be in the show for another year. At the same time, any closing is always sad. And my thoughts are with the company, with the crew, with everyone working at the theater and outside theatre. On this particular production, I think they've all done a great job. I think it's a really fun show, really vibrant show with a brilliantly talented cast. They've done a great job in marketing it and producing it here in London. You can go and check out my coverage from the show's opening night. You can go see my review to find out what I thought about it. But if you have any inclination to go and see Mean Girls before June of 2025, go and check it out. It has relatively inexpensive tickets available. There are also tickets available via the Today latex app on a daily rush. And they do a Friday matinee, if that means anything to you. Hell, I might even go and return to the show this week. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this theatre news recap. I hope that has been informative and or enjoyable. If you have any other thoughts you want to share about the closing of Mean Girls in the West End, about those other rumoured productions that may or may not be heading to the Savoy, stay tuned for announcements soon. I feel like they're coming. Make sure to comment with all your thoughts and feelings down below. 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. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.