CLUELESS THE MUSICAL — Page 3

chuckydisc said: "wish i were here2 said: "I was at the show tonight and it was a hot mess.

It all came off like an amateur parody production that wasn’t funny."

Well what do you expect from an Off-Off-Broadway preview?"

Except it’s just off-Broadway.

I saw the show last night, and honestly, I actually enjoyed myself. Is it the next Hamilton? Absolutely not. But did I laugh a bunch and have a good time? Surely.

It is clearly in the same vein as Rock of Ages and Margaritaville, and nearly the entire ensemble has spent time in one or both of those show. I could definitely see this settling in for an off-Broadway run somewhere-the film has enough fans to sell the show, regardless of the content of the musical.

I am not going to comment too much on actual content-I have a friend working on the show who said that 18 pages of changes went into the show last night, and a song was cut, on their first day of changes-Enough that the director came out before the show and gave the fair warning of a potential show stop, but they made it through without stopping.

It seemed half the room were creatives, and there were quite a number of young kids there to see Dove Cameron live-The title sold the show, she's the reason it's nearly completely sold out.

The cast is uniformly strong, but I think Dove Cameron is a name to watch-what a voice. If she likes the theater thing, I could see her being a mainstay in New York, and she has the young fanbase to introduce to theater, but who will likely get their parents to pay to see her in anything.

The actual show is at just about 2 hours of content, plus an intermission. I could see them getting it down to a 100-minute one-act at some point.

Clueless = Hopeless.



We saw the Saturday matinee from down front. Joined the New Group for this and one other show that looks good (it had better be). Didn't know Dove but I'm sure our nieces know this emotionless Barbie Doll.



I bet a good high school for the Performing Arts could have done a better job adapting this cute film and done a better job of rewriting contemporary songs to fit the script.


The cast works hard, and the actors who play Dionne's boyfriend and the dad/teacher/driving instructor were both head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. I think they need to go full Xanadu if they want to make this any good . . . if that's a goal beyond selling tix in a small space, of course.

onesongglory2 said: "What the current running time? The website says 2 and a half hours, but earlier here someone said it was just about 2. Thanks!"

Thursday night, it ran 2:20, including intermission.

I thought the show was pretty awful for a lot of reasons, but here's the thing:

I actually think the idea to do the music like that is very smart - in theory at least. The big problem with jukebox musicals is that the writers have to struggle to make the lyrics fit the situation by manufacturing the plot around the songs, and/or picking songs that have very generalized lyrics. So to re-write the lyrics to existing songs sort of solves that problem. I think if you're going to do a jukebox musical, it's a smart approach to take. Also, there's a sense of authenticity of having actual music from the 90s, when odds are the alternative would have been some young composer "trying their best" to replicate that style

Problem is, the replacement lyrics were horrendously bad. But while the execution was a complete failure, I actually think the idea is sound. If someone more talented had taken on the challenge, I think it could have worked well.

Updated On: 12/2/18 at 05:14 PM

It kind of feels like New Group knows this is a dud and is hoping it slides under the radar.

I'm clueless about Clueless (Once through High School was enough) but many times to get a play on it's more important who you know than what you've got.