I am going to do something I’ve never done—or seen—in a review. I am going to cut to the chase and tell you right up front: This is the best national tour of the 21st Century, very possibly the best I’ve ever seen. It does everything right. Stop right now and purchase your tickets to Tina Fey’s Mean Girls (music by Jeff Richmond, lyrics by Nell Benjamin) at the Kennedy Center before they’re gone. Then read on to see why.
Welcome back. In 2004, Fey wrote her quintessential screenplay to date, a survival guide to high school based on Rosalind Wiseman’s book Queen Bees and Wannabes. Retitled with the more straightforward moniker Mean Girls, she explored the depths of how horribly girls treat each other in high school, to expose and hopefully improve the situation. Almost twenty years later, her highly quotable screenplay is still apparently as relevant as ever, with the contents of Regina George’s “Burn Book” just having been taken digitally to the internet.
Fey’s razor-sharp script, updated minimally but wisely from her classic screenplay, centers on naïve 16-year-old Cady Heron (Danielle Wade), the daughter of anthropologists who’ve been living abroad in Africa. But when her mother’s university grant dries up, the family is forced to move back stateside and enroll home-schooled Cady in public high school for the first time. She immediately makes friends with Janis and Damian (Mary Kate Morrissey and Erik Huffman), two outsiders who attempt to guide her through this new whiteboard jungle and introduce her to “The Plastics” who rule and ruin the school—insecure gossip Gretchen Weiners (Megan Masako Haley), “the dumbest girl you’ve ever met” Karen Smith (Jonalyn Saxer), and queen bee terror Regina George (Nadina Hassan). When The Plastics invite Cady to hang out with them (to make fun of her), Janis and Damian encourage Cady to infiltrate them for counterintelligence (to take them down). Throw in a hot guy (Adante Carter), an overly sympathetic teacher (April Josephine), and a math nerd wannabe (Kabir Berry), and high school is vicious!
The major trouble with most beloved movie-to-musical stage transfers is risking being unable to compete with their definitive film counterparts etched into our memory. No problem here. A stellar cast walks the fine balance between saluting the best of the film performances but making them their own with great direction and killer vocals on Richmond’s exuberant score. Unlike most national tours, this superior cast is equal to the original Broadway, and better than most replacements they utilized.
Danielle Wade is a winning outsider to center the story on. As we watch her transition from awkward home-schooler to an innocent fascinated by Regina George to the second coming of Regina George, she progresses fluidly while belting out new anthems every step of the way. From her opening “I want” number, “It Roars”, to the gentle and sweet “Stupid With Love”, through fangirling Regina in the amazing “Apex Predator”, to replacing her in “Fearless”, and rectifying all that is wrong in the finale “I See Stars”, Wade is a star who makes herself over half dozen times, finally evolving in a beautiful character arc.
The hardest shoes to fill in this show are Rachel McAdams’ Louboutin heels as the quintessential Regina George, and newcomer Nadina Hassan slides into a perfect fit as effortlessly as Cinderella after the ball. No need for comparisons, as the first brunette Regina (sacrificing only one of Regina’s hilarious secrets Gretchen harbors: “She isn’t really blonde. Her natural color is dark blonde.”) she owns the role and the audience from the moment she arrives. Given a huge, featured diva entrance (think Cher in concert) atop a cafeteria table slinkily singing her theme song (“My name is Regina George, and I am a massive deal….”), we buy into her special blend of worship and intimidation that makes her fascinating as easily as the denizens of North Shore High. Hassan provides supernatural vocal talents in a difficult score that features the steamy, manipulative “Someone Gets Hurt” and one of the best 11:00 showstoppers of the new millennium, “World Burn”, wherein Regina unleashes her unlimited wrath upon Cady, the students of North Shore, and anyone else who has ever squared off in her way. Hassan impressively tackles all the vocal acrobatics of this powerhouse number as it continuously modulates ever higher and higher until one thinks it’s over, then navigates yet one more key change.
As Regina’s fellow Plastics Gretchen and Karen, Megan Masako Haley and Jonalyn Saxer are hilarious support, each their own blend of social comfortability, status, and massive insecurity. Richmond & Benjamin give them each a solo to hit out of the park. Haley finds all the requisite pathos in her introspective, reflective bittersweet ballad “What’s Wrong With Me?”, a universal checklist for every high school girl who has evaluated her self-worth through the impossible lens of comparing to others’ unattainable goals. Saxon brings the house down with the shallow but aptly titled “Sexy”, a nod to Fey’s observation in the movie that “Halloween is the one night a year when every girl can dress like a slut and no one can say anything.” When “lingerie and animal ears can be a costume.” She gets hysterical comic assistance from Gregg Barnes’ imaginative creations as he fleshes out her costume ideas, which includes the likes of Sexy Corn, Sexy Quinn and Sexy Shark (from Jaws), even Sexy Eleanor Roosevelt and Sexy Rosa Parks.
Special recognition is required for our de facto narrators for the evening, the preternaturally jaded goth artist Janis Sarkisian (Mary Kate Morrissey) and the “too gay to function” Damian Hubbard (Erik Huffman), who get our evening off to a rousing start with “A Cautionary Tale”. Sharing a supreme degree of comic timing as a team while they float into and out of scenes, they are also given great opportunities to shine individually. Huffman gets two showstopping production numbers, “Where Do You Belong?”, a musical interpretation of the iconic and oft-saluted “map of the cafeteria” sequence of the movie, and “Stop”, a tapdancing tribute to every bad decision made in the name of love when teens only have 25% of the impulse control centers of their brains fully developed.
Morrissey makes the most of all her musical opportunities with her strong belt in her half of ultimate production number “Apex Predator” opposite Wade and “Revenge Party” with Huffman, in which they hatch their fantasy plot to destroy Regina George. But Morrissey rocks the house down with an unexpected second 11:00 number, after Hassan has already torched the stage in “World Burn” (An 11:15 number?), when a spurned Janis gets her big “I Will Survive” moment, “I’d Rather Be Me (Than Be With You)”.
Rounding out the cast are Adante Carter, who instills hot guy Aaron Samuels with a down-to-earth sweetness. He also compliments Wade in their gentle duets, the awkward flirtations of “Stupid With Love (reprise)” and their breakup ballad “More Is Better”. Kabir Berry brings Mathlete with ambitions of hip-hop grandeur Kevin G to rousing life, making a peripheral character most memorable with his high-energy vocals and dance moves during “Do This Thing” and “Whose House Is This?”. And April Josephine literally does the work of three women in this production, playing all the cameo roles of former SNL alums Fey (self-deprecating math teacher Ms. Norberry), Ana Gasteyer (Cady’s mom), and the scene-stealing Amy Poehler (Regina’s mom) from the movie. And she succeeds finding the comic gold in all of them. Her best moment is when Regina’s mom parlays a reprise off Gretchen’s “What’s Wrong With Me?” as she questions her parenting choices, letting us see that we never quite outgrow comparing ourselves to others’ unattainable goals.
But the performers aren’t the only rock stars in this unparalleled tour. Stellar direction and choreography by Casey Nicholaw keeps the pace rolling at the speed of the movie and highlights all the required classic bits (You go, Glen Coco!). His vision is brilliant, starting with flawless casting, and layering on the rapid-fire use of breathtaking scene changes and innovative choreography incorporating everything from a mock Lion King segment in Africa, clever use of mobile cafeteria tables and trays for a Busby Berkeley-style “Where Do You Belong?”, and his best, “Apex Predator” in which his dance ensemble liken student life at the mall to animal pecking order at the watering hole.
Fey’s book is wisely loyal to her critically acclaimed masterpiece screenplay. She knows where the quotable lines are expected, where the jokes still work, and where they can be improved on in the 15 years distance between her movie and Broadway debuts. Most of the iconic moments a loyal fan expects are there, and there are some clever new surprises, inspired by technological advances. Many mundane theatre fans (and Tony voters) vent their self-importance whining about “stop making movies into musicals, we want more original works.” They’re ridiculous, considering most of what they consider “original works” are based on other sources of books or plays. Why not movies, especially when a superior writer like Fey has gone out of her way to improve and adapt her screenplay to something better for a different medium and produced a product that may be better than the source? Fey was robbed, grand larceny, of her Tony for Best Book.
Jeff Richmond’s (Fey’s husband) well-thought-out, exceptionally entertaining score utilizes a variety of styles and themes to reflect each character. Cady’s themes have a heavy Hans Zimmer African sound, Regina’s solos have the dangerous feel of a Bond girl theme, Karen’s music is simple and child-like, Damian’s is stereotypically Broadway show music and dance numbers. Yet it all gels into a unified, uniquely clever, and, most of all, extremely fun score. Nell Benjamin’s lyrics are a clever blend of wit and high school vernacular, particularly succeeding in the big numbers like “Apex Predator”, “World Burn”, and Janis and Damian’s “Revenge Party” where she rhymes “Regina” aptly with “lions in a Roman arena”. And there are special laughs to be had just by setting the contents of the “Burn Book” to music.
Scott Pask’s next level set design relies heavily on a semicircular LED screen unit like you’ve never seen before, as a universal background that keeps up with the movie-like location cuts and is utilized perfectly by Finn Ross & Adam Young’s visionary and incredibly detailed video designs. For those who from time to time miss the physical 3-D of a traditional set, if this is the future of Broadway, this team is driving the way there at breakneck speed. It is rare to see such a complex and intricate set design in a touring production. There are times one forgets it’s a video image until it fades, morphs, or explodes into another background seamlessly. Oh, and take time to read all the “Burn Book” pages that decorate the stage in preshow and intermission.
Gregg Barnes’ costumes perfectly reflect the styles of the movie and help define all the high school cliques from the Plastics (“On Wednesdays we wear pink.”) to the Mathletes (“If we can get a girl on the team, we can get more money. We want jackets.”) to all the other subgroups—varsity athletes, sexually active band geeks, debate team and dance team, girls who eat their feelings and girls who don’t eat—we meet in “Where Do You Belong?” But Barnes embraces his chances to shine with his hilarious, over-the-top Halloween costumes for “Sexy” (where does one even start to design Sexy Rosa Parks?) and one single costume that steals the entire “Revenge Party” number when Gretchen spills Regina’s ultimate secret that “She’s totally cheating on Aaron. Every Thursday….she’s hooking up with Shane Ohman in the North Shore Lion’s costume.” Wait for it.
Kenneth Posner provides wonderful lighting designs, which are more complicated than usual when competing with such intricate and detailed high-powered projections and LED work. He balances them in perfect tandem. And, as always, Brian Ronan takes full advantage of the Kennedy Center’s superior acoustics to provide excellent sound design.
Seeing this tour for the fist time since entertainment shut down with Covid, it ripped open some old personal wounds for this critic. Namely how a musical of this caliber, quality, and spectacle with the most nominations of its season left the Tony Awards empty handed while the dinosaur voters orchestrated a sweep for a smaller show. Fey’s snub for Best Book was criminal, but after revisiting this master showcase for the material, strong cases could be made for Nicholaw’s taut direction, Pask, Ross, & Young’s astounding work in set design, several original cast performances, and the show itself as the Best Musical of 2018. A cautionary tale for the Helen Hayes Awards—anything less than a sweep of Best Guest Production and Best Guest Performances will throw your relevance into question too. So, as I said at the top, what are you still doing reading if you haven’t bought your tickets? This is the best national tour I have ever seen. For those who get it, Fey, Nicholaw & company, did the improbable. They made “Fetch” happen. So go now, sit with them, before you can’t.
Photos by Jenny Anderson
Running Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes with one intermission
Mean Girls plays through April 24, 2022, in the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington, DC. For tickets call the box office at (202) 467-4600 or purchase them online.