By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Saturday 31 August (matinee), runs through 23 February 2025 RUNTIME: 150 minutes (with a 20-minute interval)

Is brat summer over?

• Read on for reasons including how this doesn’t have the catchy musical numbers so necessary for this to take flight

We make a playlist of Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter as we head for the West End to see the musical of a movie and its recent remake written by the genius that is Tina Fey that we’ve yet to catch.

The pre-show playlist at the Savoy Theatre is more than familiar with the highs and lows of brat summer and the predominantly young female and male gay audience at this matinee are excitable and ready to party.

We give you the story of Cady Heron, a teenage girl given life by the excellent Charlie Burn (main picture, left) who transfers to a public high school after being homeschooled in Africa, and befriends outsiders who persuade her to infiltrate the Plastics clique, the titular mean girls who rule the school.

We’re big fans of Heathers, itself a film turned musical, and this set-up doesn’t sound a million miles from that superior show currently touring the country after a series of successful West End runs in recent years.

In fact Ako Mitchell (Bonnie & Clyde, Arts Theatre), who has a supporting role here as a teacher, even appeared in a recent production of Heathers we saw.

Like Heathers, the Plastics have their own particular language – ‘that’s so fetch’ being 1 – and we find ourselves being more interested in the outsiders, gay Damian Hubbard played by the very funny Tom Xander and Elena Skye who is more than his match as Janice Sarkisian.

The problem with Mean Girls is that unlike the super memorable Heathers it doesn’t really have the immediately catchy musical numbers so necessary for this theatrical form to take flight.

We do care about Cady’s predicament despite finding her outsider friends more interesting than the misguided Plastics – Georgina Castle, Grace Mouat (Be More Chill, Shaftesbury Theatre) and Elena Gyasi all fine – yet we wished Daniel Bravo (so good in Cruel Intentions this year at the Other Palace) was given more to do in his love interest role.

The recent film remake of the original celluloid version drew on the musical and was a financial if not critical hit and its success will propel this theatre version which we were delighted to see so busy from our 3rd row seat although not quite fully understanding why.

As we write this, it’s the beginning of September in London, it’s 27 degrees outside and, although brat summer shows no sign of slipping from memory, Mean Girls the musical will, we suspect for us at least, prove far less memorable.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy ATG Tickets
• Have you seen a Savoy Theatre show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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