Story of the Week: Why Is Heathers Coming Back?

Earlier this week we reported that a New York revival of Heathers: The Musical seems to be in the works, with an anticipated 2025 opening. Story of the Week will jog our readers’ memories about this cult musical, track its incredible journey across the Atlantic, and answer the crucial question: Why now?

But first, the basics…

What is Heathers: The Musical?

Heathers is based on the 1989 film by screenwriter Daniel Waters and director Michael Lehmann about an Ohio high school and the three young women (all named Heather) who rule over its fragile social ecosystem. It’s also about a psychotic newcomer named J.D. determined to blow it all up by enlisting the sweet but increasingly wayward Veronica Sawyer as his accomplice. It’s like a John Hughes movie rewritten by the Marquis de Sade.

I have described the original film as “the jaded older sister of Mean Girls,” although I have not praised the musical (written by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, with direction by Andy Fickman) in similar terms (more on that later).

Heathers debuted at LA’s Hudson Backstage Theatre in 2013 before playing a respectable yet brief off-Broadway run in 2014. Since then, Mean Girls has come and gone on Broadway, with a new film adaptation released earlier this year. Sunnier and more amenable to 21^st-century sensibilities around identity and self-harm, Mean Girls is clearly the more successful of the two musicals — at least in the United States.

Where has Heathers played since its off-Broadway run?

In the grand tradition of misunderstood Americans, Heathers has been living its best life across the pond. Multiple runs have taken place at the Other Palace in London (2018, 2022-23), the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket (2018, 2021), and the West End’s @sohoplace (2024). It won the 2019 WhatsOnStage Award for Best Musical. There was also a major tour of the UK and Ireland in 2023. A professional film capture was taken in 2022, which can currently be streamed on Roku.

Production costs in the UK are generally lower than in the United States, which certainly helped facilitate the many returns of Heathers. “The whole thing is played out on a unit set that might charitably be described as economical,” wrote WhatsOnStage critic Alun Hood about the 2021 West End production. He also praised the “marvelous lead performances, the energy of the ensemble, and the pervading sardonic wit,” which count for so much more than expensive scenery.

Most importantly, multiple runs have served to develop a loyal fan base that producers are surely hoping will undergird ticket sales in New York. Lead producer Paul Taylor-Mills was perhaps spinning too dizzily when he told WhatsOnStage, “The first night at the Haymarket was like One Direction had re-formed, actually let’s go with the Spice Girls…” But it is undeniable that the ranks of “corn nuts” (the affectionate term for superfans of Heathers) grow with each performance and every online stream of the cast recording.

Is it all about the cast recording?

Heathers has spawned not one cast recording, but two, allowing die-hard fans to hear how the show has evolved on its transatlantic passage. As I’ve written about Lempicka and its likely journey through the wilderness, cast recordings extend the life of a musical, allowing the property to build an audience over the course of decades. They also give listeners, even those who were present in the theater, an opportunity to really hear the lyrics.

One of my great misgivings about reviewing new musicals is the fact that no human can process and internalize an entire musical score in one sitting. Important lyrics will be missed (a problem exacerbated by sound balance issues) and melodies will go in one ear and out the other — but this doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad songs! Realistically, if you can get an audience to remember two or three tunes, you’ve succeeded.

A defensive critic might retort, “A musical is a property for the stage and if the composer cannot convey all of her ideas in that venue, she has failed.” But this doesn’t account for the reality that in the digital age, people regularly discover musicals outside of the theater — and this is a perfectly valid way to enjoy at least an element of an art form that comprises many parts.

If you weren’t crazy about Heathers in 2014, why would 2025 be any different?

I was dismissive of Heathers in my 2014 review, arguing that the musical had blunted the film’s edge. But having recently listened to both cast recordings, I realize I missed a lot of what made Heathers a cleverly prescient musical that has attracted a legion of young fans.

The song “Freeze Your Brain” paints an especially vivid portrait of J.D., a young man unmoored from community, whose only comfort is found in the icy embrace of a 7-Eleven slushie, its numbing sensation less powerful (yet more delicious) than Fentanyl. He sings, “I learned to cook pasta / I learned to pay rent / Learned the world doesn’t owe you a cent.” In many ways, he is the ideal American consumer — and that has turned him into a psychopath.

The full extent of his apocalyptic malice is revealed in the number “Our Love Is God,” in which he convinces Veronica to join him in committing double murder. He sings, “We’ll burn it down and then / We’ll build the world again,” describing himself and his partner-in-crime as “the asteroid that’s overdue.” Here, J.D. emerges as an archetype that we have come to know well from a succession of school shootings and a recent assassination attempt: the nihilistic young man who believes the world can only be cleansed by fire. It is not lost on me that he shares a name with a Vice Presidential candidate who has made his career talking about depressed American communities and the scourge of globalized liberalism, and who exhibits similarly accelerationist tendencies.

Murphy and O’Keefe smartly chase this terrifying song with “My Dead Gay Son,” a rollicking production number that lampoons the identity politics that have come to serve as a Band-Aid (but are more often an irritant) on a much deeper, ever-festering wound. Is this something that New York audiences are finally ready to confront and maybe even laugh about?

When Heathers appeared off-Broadway in 2014, America was just ramping up into a social media-fueled culture of censoriousness that reached its shrill zenith in 2020 (call it “woke” if you must). That means, of course, that the party was already in full swing in New York, which prides itself on being ahead of the curve for even the most irritating trends. It absolutely wasn’t the best environment for a musical like Heathers, which pushes boundaries and revels in taboo.

But 2024 is a different environment, with audiences more receptive to work that challenges orthodoxies, especially in a humorous way. If the overwhelming successes of Teeth and Oh, Mary! have taught us anything, it’s that New York audiences are hungry to laugh at all the things they’re not supposed to laugh at. They will absolutely open their wallets for producers willing to put artfully constructed transgression onstage. So now is the time for Heathers to fuck the theater gently with a chainsaw.