Mean Girls Musical Soundtrack Review
I’m getting a feeling of Déjà vu here… did we… have we done this one already?
No, wait. I reviewed Mean Girls the film. This is Mean Girls the musical soundtrack. It’s a completely different animal. This one SINGS.
The story is familiar: Protagonist Cady has just moved from the African savannah to the even harsher wilderness of the American suburbs, falls in with art kids Damian and Janis, finds herself going undercover with the most popular girls in the school (the “Plastics,”) makes mistakes, and learns lessons. The setting is updated about a decade to 2010’s so that social media references are common, but is largely the same (which makes sense, since Tina Fey, screenplay writer of the original, and her husband helped write this one.)
The most interesting changes are to the characters. In the original film, Cady is remarkably quiet for the majority of the film, and Lindsay Lohan played her as a reserved newcomer. In the musical, Erika Hannigan’s Cady is a goofy, over-the-top fish-out-of-water, shouting “Hi, teens!” on her first day of school. That’s the musical stage heightening reality, but it does change the dynamic of the play when a character shouting, “I’m filled with calcu-LUST!” later goes a little wild. The fall from, let’s say, “grace” feels a little thinner when the character is already that dramatic.
Janis (played by the amazing Barrett Wilbert Weed from the Heathers Musical) and Damian deservedly get more focus in the play, too, making the most of their “art kid” personas to really fit the musical genre (like Damian shouting out the dance moves he’s doing in the opening number) and adding extra insight as narrators.
Some of the songs in this one are forgettable, but the sound for many of the main characters is distinct and the show-stoppers live up to the name. Cady, as I mentioned, starts with bright, Disney princess tunes. Janis and Damian are self-aware. The Plastics are introduced with a song cut in three: dim Karen’s song is playground-rhyme simple, gossip Gretchen’s is an up-tempo hot mess, and Regina George has a sultry, Bond villain song informing the audience and every character that she is “a massive deal.” Regina’s songs sound amazing, but didn’t land for me personally: much like Cady, Regina’s film-version, understated cattiness is easier to wrap your head around than the smoldering, Hollywood debutante/evil queen she is on stage (though you could make the case this is just a high schooler’s perception of Regina).
As for those unforgettable songs, like “Apex Predator,” “It Roars,” and “I’d Rather Be Me,” you just have to hear them.
This musical and its twin really are a fun practice in seeing adaptation as translation. Taking characters the audience knows well and translating their ambitions and flaws into songs and choreography shows that adaptation isn’t so much about what stays in each version, but how each version uses its medium to communicate the same ideas. And since Tina Fey’s in charge of both, you get a perfect control/variable relationship to work through.
All this to say, I don’t think either version is better than the other, but the little choices and quirks for each are fun and delightful. 4 revenge parties out of 5.