Review: Romy & Michele Looks Like a Mary but Sounds Like a Rhoda

I won’t pretend to be one of the superfans of the 1997 movie Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, though I do, as a Gen Xer, get the appeal. The film came out when its two stars, Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, were enjoying new-found celebrity, and their characters seemed to embody my generation’s “financial insecurity” problems to a T. Plus, the soundtrack was a banging, ’80s-heavy collection of iconic pop that I could listen to on a loop.

I can’t say the same for the score of Romy & Michele, a new musical directed by Kristin Hanggi at Stage 42. The songs, written by Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay, and orchestrated by Keith Harrison Dworkin, have all the substance of a scrunchie, but book writer Robin Schiff, who wrote the screenplay, has wisely chosen to retain choice bits from the movie, often verbatim, to tweak fans’ nostalgia while making some welcome revisions, including a more satisfying ending.

Still, the story is thin as a floppy disk. Romy (Laura Bell Bundy speaking with a curiously thick drawl) is a lowly cashier at a Jaguar dealership, and Michele (Kara Lindsay giving Kudrow realness) is unemployed. They’ve been besties since forever, and they moved together to LA from Tucson after high school. Ten years after graduating, their former classmate Toby (Je’shaun Jackson) invites them to a class reunion, but how can they face their peers when they have so little to show for the past decade? Not wanting to tell the truth, they come up with a cockamamie lie to make everyone think they’re successful businesswomen: they invented Post-its.

Nothing either of them did in school would make that remotely believable, but they carry out their plan, with predicably ridiculous results. Caite Hevner’s frenetic projections give us yearbook flashbacks to Romy and Michele’s teens, when they were stylish misfits tormented by mean girls Christie (Lauren Zakrin, perfect as an alpha bully), Kelly (Erica Dorfler), Lisa (Ninako Donville), and Cheryl (Hannah Florence). Like Hevner’s projections, Tina McCartney’s costumes are a confection of colors that keep our eyes agog, even as the story occasionally makes them glaze over.

Visual stimulation is important when most of the music does so little to get us excited. Fortunately, Bundy and Lindsay have enough chemistry to patch some of the holes, and they did win me over with their sweet duet “The Coolest Person I Know.” Jackson shines too as the school photographer, Toby, who not only gives the production big laughs and warm fuzzies, but also celebrates the show’s underlying queerness, something Schiff’s book leans into. “Next week let’s go to a gay club where people get us,” says Romy with a wink to the audience, and we do.

Pascal Pastrana adds to the simmering homoeroticism as Christie’s hunky boyfriend, who gets Romy worked up in “Oh, Billy.” DeMarius R. Copes brings high dance energy to the flashback prom scene and a kookie dream sequence. Jordan Kei Burnett plays the sullen outsider Heather and steals the show as she channels Chita Rivera in the number “Love Is …” (Jason Lyons red lighting and Connor Wang’s pulsating sound design make this number sizzle). Schiff has also sensibly given the movie’s black-hatted cowboy the boot to rid the story of a major flaw, giving Heather’s love interest, Sandy (Michael Thomas Grant), a more believable chance at true romance.

Will you leave humming any of the numbers? Probably not. Romy & Michele will likely appeal most to those who bring affection for the movie into the theater with them—and they won’t be disappointed. Still intact are favorite scenes, like the argument about who’s cuter: “I’m the Mary and you’re the Rhoda,” says Michele to Romy. And then there’s the iconic interpretive dance, which choreographer Karla Puno Garcia gives an original spin while paying homage to the film. This is Romy and Michele at their quirky best—and you can put that on a Post-it.