Heathers — Page 2

Another thing that leads me to believe the next stop is Broadway is the way the official social media accounts of the show keeps pushing that this is your last chance to see us at Westerburg Off! and "19 shows left OFF BROADWAY!"

"Another thing that leads me to believe the next stop is Broadway is the way the official social media accounts of the show keeps pushing that this is your last chance to see us at Westerburg Off! and "19 shows left OFF BROADWAY!"

That's not what it says.

Updated On: 7/20/14 at 07:52 PM

Maybe it's just touring in select cities?

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I'd love for it to be revamped, rewritten and restaged and made for an audience old enough to grow pubic hair. Then, I think it could work!

I don't agree it was beyond terrible. And again, any performance which brings young people to the theatre is just fine in my book. Not putting Heathers in the same league as Rent or Hair, but if theatre doesn't change with the generations it will suffocate and die. I am sure people for the 30s would look at our classics for the 60s and think they were pop and frivolous

Maybe I just have a different viewpoint. But to see 400+ people under 30 enjoy a live theatre experience is valuable to me

And I think the performances and the cast recording were both very enjoyable. And I am old(er)!

The potential problem is: you likely wouldn't be able to find 400+ 30 years old and younger who would pay $145 a ticket on Broadway. And then how do you fill the remaining 800 seats in a Broadway house?

HEATHERS would be a bad bet in my opinion for Broadway. It's too warped to be a family musical, and too weird to be a tourist musical and too sophomoric to appeal to just about everyone else.

And I think the people behind it know that. HEATHERS is a 'cult' musical and the best plan would be to allow regional stagings. It would likely be a popular title for colleges and small quirky theaters (of which every town seams to have at least one).

I don't think that the movie would work onstage in 2014. We live in a really different world than we did almost 30 years ago. Our experiences with school shootings, teen suicide, and gun violence add a lot of context to the show that would, in my opinion, make a lot of the original material dark to the point of unpalatable. Maybe it would have made a good show, I can't really argue that hypothetical, but I think it would have been an even harder sell that way.

I'm personally glad they put such distance between the source material and the story they chose to present. Since Dan Waters was very involved in the process with the show and has said nothing but positive things about it, I'm assuming he didn't feel the material was "disrespected" and I think he's in more of a position to be protective of it.

Updated On: 7/20/14 at 08:21 PM

Right. If they wanted to bring young people into theater with material that would be a hit with young people, they should have just done Mean Girls. That movie was an actual hit and you constantly see memes and gifs made by young people (and nostalgic 30 year-olds).

Heathers was a cult classic and hit a chord with those who were seeking something dark and twisted and satirical. Its material does not really lend itself to mass-market appeal (unless you want to change it). I mean the movie is popular with certain movie goers but it was not a hit in its time.

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Updated On: 7/20/14 at 08:23 PM

I don't think Daniel Waters was involved in the creation of the musical at all. He just enjoyed it and has been supportive. I recall them saying the first time he saw it, he was writing a bunch of notes during it, and they assumed he was writing all of the stuff he hated about it, but it turned out, he was capturing the new lines he enjoyed so he could tell his friends about them. But that anecdote (from an interview/story I couldn't find just now) seems to indicate he had no role in its creation.

I've heard one of the creators of the show specifically say that they had many serious, productive and fairly frequent conversations with Dan during the process of getting the show up. Beyond that, I don't have any inside info, but it's clear he didn't have serious problems with what Larry, Kevin, and Andy came up with.

"Ok..... So then.....why not write a new musical that WOULD work onstage?"

Because they thought that they could adapt Heathers to a new medium and make plot changes that would help bring the story to a new audience and remove some of the problematic parts of the movie that now might be hard to swallow for audiences who grew up with things like Newtown and Columbine burned into their consciousness? Whether or not they succeeded is a completely subjective debate. You didn't like it. A lot of people did. C'est la vie.

Personally, for me, I thought certain changes made the show weaker but I did really enjoy some of them. One thing I did like though was the changes to Veronica's character. I thought Veronica was a very passive character in the movies who seemed to have a moral compass and a spine but didn't really do much to change the things she thought were so wrong and repulsive until the last 10 minutes of the movie. I like that the musical forces her to make more choices. I like that they actually depict the moment where Veronica becomes involved with the Heathers and she articulates why she wants to be part of their crew, since in the movie we start off immediately with her having massive disdain for them, which always made me wonder why she'd joined up in the first place. I agree that Martha and Betty could easily have been combined and serve all of the same purposes in the story that both characters served in the movie.

Anyway, like I said, whether or not their interpretation of the source material worked for you is totally subjective, but I don't think the effort was wasted or that anything about their final product was disrespectful. And for my money "Seventeen" and "Our Love is God" were two of the best original songs to come out of this season.

If the synopsis I read was accurate, then I thought it was stupid to combine Betty Finn and Martha "Dumptruck". Martha's suicide attempt was a result of being absolutely ignored and having no friends. People barely acknowledged her existence other than the few times they would make fun of her like in the beginning of the film. She saw all the positive attention Heather and the two jocks received for their suicide (the movie's point of how people glamorize suicide and death of young, attractive, popular people), and out of desperation and ultimate sadness, she thought that if she also committed suicide, then maybe people would finally give her the attention and love she sought and say great things about her.

The synopsis makes her sound like some idiotic girl who jumps off the bridge because of Ram. Correct me if I'm wrong on this though.

Also Betty and Veronica…Finn and Sawyer… Betty Finn was a glimpse into Veronica's past. The fact that even though Veronica stopped hanging out with her due to the Heathers' influence, but still spoke to her when the opportunity arose and felt sane around her let's the audience know that Veronica still has a heart and a connection to her pre-Heathers self. The movie Veronica, despite her passivity at times with the Heathers and being swept up with JD, would never intentionally hurt a close friend of hers (like Betty) but forging a note and then lying to her face about it while the Musical Veronica is supposed to be great friends with Martha but lets her think Ram likes her and only tells Martha the truth to cover her ass.

And theatregeek6, if it won't make much of a profit, then how many young people will it really bring to theatre? That's the point of bringing that up. Also, people may not be arguing about recreating the movie. Just that if they are going to deviate, then make sure it's actually a better product or just as good. You may think it is, but other people don't.

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Updated On: 7/20/14 at 08:51 PM

True. But then it seems a lot of people had issues with the show.

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Yeah I'm annoyed with me right now too. I think it'd be helpful (and not useless) if you told me exactly why and how I mischaracterized the show. Of course, you don't have to as it would take some effort on your part.

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