Heathers – 09 July 2025

In the theatre industry, the power ballads from Heathers have become iconic and unavoidable. Despite this, I had never heard them in the context of a production of the show. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the show immensely. It was the perfect freeze for my brain, and I found the world of the show engrossing, enrapturing, and engaging the whole way through. Casey Likes and Lorna Courtney both gave incredible, electric performances, and their chemistry with each other was ironclad. The Telsey Office got casting for this show absolutely perfect.

One of my favorite moments was when JD (Casey Likes) sang his love ode to 7-Eleven slurpees, “Freeze Your Brain.” This riveting performance conveyed several dimensions—in Likes’s capable hands, it was not just the introduction to JD’s sociopathic tendencies, but also conveyed an angsty sadness and longing that helped this increasingly frightening character retain likableness. This was critical to the audience buying into Veronica (Lorna Courtney)’s desire to stay with him, which otherwise would have seemed pathetic at best. Even when not in scenes together, Likes and Courtney worked hard to constantly develop their relationship to each other in addition to carefully crafting the individual characters’ changing motivations.

Everybody maximized the vocal opportunities afforded in this score, and the orchestrations (Laurence O’Keefe/Ben Green) were a real treat. The show was tightly choreographed (Gary Lloyd/Stephanie Klemons), with well thought out design elements—most impressively, costumes (David Shields) and the tight collaboration between lighting (Ben Cracknell) and sound (Dan Samson). I could go on and on endlessly about killer vocal performances from Erin Morton, Kerry Butler, and McKenzie Kurtz in particular.

Heathers as a musical successfully achieves that rare straddle of musical comedy and appropriately handling serious themes. Much of the show deals with themes about suicide and how conversations about suicide can be mishandled, as well as murder, toxic relationships, bullying, loss of a parent/child, child abuse, homophobia, and what it means to grow up on your own terms versus grow up forcibly on someone else’s timeline. This cast and director (Andy Fickman/Gary Lloyd) do a remarkable job of knowing which lines to take seriously and which can be made funny. The moments of levity interwoven in the show mostly came from the adult characters, like Ram’s Dad (Ben Davis) and Kurt’s Dad (Cameron Loyal) in “My Dead Gay Son”, and Ms. Fleming (Kerry Butler)’s show-stopping assembly in “Shine a Light”. The teenage characters, by contrast, dealt with the most sincere and serious moments, and it was through these younger cast members that the show continued to raise the stakes while giving the audience something to care about.

The show contains a lot of fake personas and also a lot of fake suicides. Thematically, it proves that a suicide note doesn’t solve any problems. Heathers is largely about failed communication and misunderstandings. Everyone wants to be loved—the Heathers think that happens through popularity, the jocks think that happens through sex, Veronica thinks that happens through imitation, JD thinks that happens through murder—the common thread is that everybody lies. Martha (Erin Morton) is the only authentic character, and also one of the only authentic suicide attempts. Her childishness and her truth serve as a powerful beacon of hope that, in a society that demands rigidity and focus it is incredibly easy to get lost and become your own worst enemy. Most of these characters stand in their own way. It is the solidarity of the shared trauma at the end of the musical that allows them to start over. It shouldn’t have to take a near death experience, but it does. This social commentary reveals just how hard it is to be seventeen and caught between adulthood and childhood—especially when the adults act like children and the children have to act like adults.

Despite the heavy themes, Heathers is an incredibly enjoyable performance, due in large part to the clear commitment of this cast and creative team to allowing the show to speak for itself. Heathers’s truth is powerful and engaging, and the experience of seeing it is an absolute delight. I laughed, I cried, and, most importantly, I listened.

I attended this performance on a press pass from The Press Room.