#heathersposting

cady heron rewrite

GAYson dean

heather WOKEler

PRONOUNS duke

some years ago i saw the original West End production of the Heathers musical. it was fucking excellent. the other day i saw a production at a smaller theatre and uh

i have some thoughts

JESUS CHRIST the original west end production was fucking good? i fully didn’t appreciate at the time how good it was? like i KNEW it was good and i loved it but i didn’t have anything to compare it with and now i do and just holy shit

LOOK I KNOW it isn’t fair to compare a west end production with a smaller theatre’s so i’m fully ignoring things like set/size of the band/etc. but look i can’t see two productions of the same show and not compare them to some degree and look, what i’ve realised is just

THE WEST END PRODUCTION. with carrie hope fletcher and jamie muscato? FUCKING. AMAZING

it seems (from having seen the original 80s movie and also a few clips/comments on youtube, and also the smaller production) that carrie and jamie’s veronica and jd rather differ from the movie versions, they’re rather more sympathetic

they’re both more vulnerable! more sincere! AND I THINK THAT MAKES IT BETTER

LOOK WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SAY IS

IT’S STARTING TO LOOK LIKE JAMIE MUSCATO’S JD IS FAR FUCKING SUPERIOR TO EVERYONE ELSE’S BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY FUCKING SELLS THE MAGICAL MIX OF JD WHICH IS

1) charming hot teenage bad boy -- baudelaire-quoting badass -- who veronica totally falls for because he’s hot and stands up to bullies etc.

2) victim of an abusive father, abandoned (in a sense) by his mother

3) murderous psycho

and look.

you fucking need 2) in order to make JD good, in my opinion. without 2), he’s just a hot bad boy who’s also a psycho and that’s interesting, but you just don’t give a shit when bad things happen to him when he’s like that. which means you care less. which makes his character worse.

god i think for heathers you fucking need all the JD/Veronica songs to have real emotional weight behind them. they don’t work nearly as well when either JD or Veronica have too much irony/sarcasm/detached teenager vibes and not enough genuine caring

like i think veronica needs to be fully in love with JD and he needs to be fully in love with her, otherwise Seventeen doesn’t really work and OH BOY do Meant To Be Yours and Dead Girl Walking not work either

the reason why Seventeen works is that Veronica’s imploring JD to give up his killing spree/insane beliefs by appealing to him with idyllic teenage normalcy and romance and you see JD at least APPEARING to buy it! and that only happens when they both actually care for each other to some degree

and you need this moment of JD seeming maybe to ‘go good’ so that when he has his full-on villain breakdown, it actually packs a punch