HTAC’s Heathers: The Musical – Review
- The Setlist
- 4 days ago
- 10 min read
Written By: Gavin Kennedy
Edited By: Sophia Shull
I recently saw the Harrington Theatre Arts Company Production of Heathers: The Musical at the Bacchus Theatre. In a broad sense, this was one of the best pieces of non-professional theatre I have ever seen, and an amazing personal introduction to HTAC and their creatives. Individual performances, stage construction, costuming, lighting, and direction were all amazing from the moment the first note came through the speakers to the curtain call.
Technical Design
For some added context, the following picture is a representation of my seating, as I was lucky enough to get seats on the very front left corner right next stage.
The set behind the curtain and apron stage was minimalist because of the restricting confines of the Bacchus stage, but the few pieces of set they had were brilliantly designed and utilized, with credit to Technical Director Alex Hand and Lead Carpenter Kylie Parmore. From Heather Chandler's house to Westerberg High itself, I never had any question as to where the audience was, which is a testament to an amazing design by the technical team.
One particular physical scene design I want to highlight is the scene at JD’s house. This set is a brilliant design, telling the story of the many moves JD and his dad have made, creating a loveless, desolate, domestic warzone through a singular couch and minimal lighting. JD and Veronica are cuddled up the couch watching the suicide awareness event announcement put on by Ms. Flemming.
After bright lights display Ms. Flemming, representing her on TV, JD picks up a remote. The instant he acts out a button press, the lights shut off, shifting the audience’s attention back to the couple on the couch. This serves to plummet us back into the dreary no-mans-land of the Dean household. These incredibly small details are evident throughout the show, showing an amazingly firm handshake between the creative directors and the brilliant work of the Co-Lighting Designers, Gianna Houck and Jenna Kaufman.
Performances
There is not a weak performance in this entire production. Everyone, from the main characters to the ensemble members gives a 100% effort in their performance throughout the show. It is incredibly difficult to choose where to place your eyes on this stage because every single time you look somewhere else, you notice a new movement. The living, breathing organism that is the social structure of Westerberg High is exemplified by every single cast member throughout the show. I would never be able to share my entire thoughts on these performers but I will attempt to expand upon on my favorites:
Keavy Rhodes as Heather Chandler:
The scene-stealing quality of every cast member is embodied perfectly in Keavy Rhodes. She is Heather Chandler, she is a “mythic bitch.” Rhodes delivers a performance that is flawless and cements her as an essential part of every moment she partakes in; she gives us as the audience every reason to believe that she is the ringleader of this entire high school and is the reason the school’s social ecosystem survives.
Every single movement, facial expression, and line delivery is international, careful, eye-catching, and done with such eloquence that rules not only the stage, but all of Westerberg High. We feel and see the degradation of the very fabric of Westerberg after her death in the middle of act one. Her death somehow makes her acting even better. How she presents herself to Veronica’s consciousness in death in the same way that she treats the High School in life is nothing short of mind-boggling. This isn’t even to mention her superb vocal performance, where Rhodes effortlessly reaches heights that exemplify her rock-star status of a character while never sacrificing an ounce of character presentation.
The famous song “Candy Store” that sees the villainous trio of the show proclaiming their dominance over their own lives and the lives of others, Rhodes absolutely kills the riff at the end. Something I especially appreciate about her performance is how, unlike other performances of this part of the song, she never acts like she is trying too hard or show-boating, instead acting like this impeccable feat of vocal maneuvering is something she does every day, leading to us, the audience, believing her. This only serves to contribute to the mythology of her character to the audience
Bella Scheffler as Veronica Sawyer:
An extremely important yet underappreciated aspect of Veronica’s character is the need to balance the fact that she is not the average coming-of-age hero. This is not just because she is responsible for the deaths of 4 people, but because she is not a loser. Veronica, unlike many social rags-to-riches stories, is already an extremely smart, charismatic, and a talented person and it is on the actor to portray that. Scheffler does this and then some. She leans into the comedy aspect of this character while having the range to produce passionate and horrifying scenes as well.
Scheffler’s acting mixed with a jaw-dropping vocal performance I think is best seen in the song “Our Love Is God” where she entraps her attempted assaulters, Kurt and Ram, under JD’s false pretenses that they’re just going to embarrass them and shoot them with tranquilizers, but JD ends up actually shooting and killing them with live rounds. Scheffler switches from a comedy aspect of seducing Ram and Kurt in a comically-gullible manner to the immediate shock in her realization as to what JD has just done.
After both are dead, the original lyrics earlier in the song return in a more sinister manner, as JD essentially holds her at gunpoint, attempting to “comfort” her as she slowly gains the realization of his sinister motives, all while he still believes he’s doing all of this for Veronica. This scene embodies everything that I love about Scheffler’s performance, including her jaw-dropping vocals on display in songs such as “Dead Girl Walking” and “I Say No” where she belts and riffs her way to a flashy performance that never feels like the intentions of her character are being sacrificed.
Evie Perry as Heather McNamara:
It would have been incredibly easy for them to fall into the trap of simply playing Heather McNamara as the comedic relief, with bangers such as “If I took a meat cleaver down the center of your skull, I’d have matching halves. That’s very important,” and, of course, “Jesus, I'm on the freaking bus again because all my rides to school are dead.” Perry very much does play these lines and this entire aspect of her character incredibly well, but this side of Heather McNamara is not as drawn out with the exceptional nuance this role needs.
Heather McNamara is the first character to truly understand the horror of the perceived suicide epidemic of Westerberg High, and she embodies this perfectly. Perry’s role stands out from the rest of the cast in her emotional song “The Me Inside Of Me” when she is clearly the most depressed to see Heather Chandler gone. We, as the audience, get the pleasure to watch as they meticulously build their character to be more and more grounded and real in how the endless deaths of her best friend and eventually her lover affects her emotionally, all culminating in the best song of the whole production upon my view that afternoon, “Lifeboat.”
Perry delivers such an amazing performance in both emotion and vocals that none of the big words I could use would do it an ounce of justice. Her raw emotions are a show-stopping contrast to the rest of the character, while also being the only truly emotional ballad of a song that the audience can relate to, as the rest of the emotional songs are shrouded in the irony of the murder of teenagers. This is an incredibly thin line to walk to not make the change overly jarring, but after a week of tech and an opening night performance the night before, Perry delivers perfectly.
Performances: Honorable Mentions
Judah Everret as Ram’s Dad and Big Bud Dean:
Judah Everret delivers a brief yet amazing performance as Ram’s Dad, as the only major scene his character is a part of is the song, “Dead Gay Son.” Everret delivers an amazing comedy performance laced in realism of the ironically progressive and traditionally emasculating subject matter of the song. This is in direct contrast to his other notable character in the show, Big Bud Dean, who is JD’s father. Everret somehow creates a believable reasoning for how JD ended up the way that he did, displaying the nurture aspect of creating a monster and a villain, with subtlety that left me speechless watching it.
Paige Thompson as Stoner Chick:
Thompson melts into the world naturally, adding to the social systems of Westerberg high as well as every other member of the ensemble. What sets her apart from the rest of the ensemble, however, is her vocals. She delivers an ensemble vocal performance as the strongest soprano one, ringing chords left and right with an elegance and blend that never feels out of place, but is always discernible from the rest of the vocals going on. There was a point in the show where she was standing in front of me in a large ensemble moment vocally, and my ears couldn’t focus on the melody given by the main characters because it was intrinsically drawn to her voice again and again.
Axel Glatt as Ms. Fleming:
She’s just having good ol’ fun with this role. Every line that Glatt delivers as Ms. Fleming is somehow funnier than the last one, down to a comedic clinic that she puts on in the song “Shine A Light”—a song that I'm not just highlighting because I had a chance to be an involved audience member. In every showing of Heathers, a member of the crowd is chosen to be the man that Ms. Fleming is having an affair with. When she picked me out of the crowd, she then proceeded to improv that I was not only a 50 year-old man having an affair with her, but then went on to proclaim that I was also having an affair with a 17 year-old student, an ensemble member that she pulled out of the dance block. Every line delivery in this song is immaculate, and Glatt’s comedic timing only seems to get better as the show proceeds, offering a comic relief as the subject matter of the show only plummets into darker and darker depths.
Creative Design
Based on my interview with Co-Creative Directors Nick Benton and Brianna Salica (read the full interview here), I was very excited to see their creative vision and general philosophy of their direction become fully realized on the stage. I could notice the passion displayed through their direction, definitely proving that both of the creative directors are first and foremost fans of this show. Their use of the stage that they designed and Bacchus Theatre in general was nothing short of brilliant. The apron stage was utilized to its fullest potential, being a space for actors to die, play croquet, mentally unravel, walk a runway, and just straight up belt. This apron stage also allows for seamless scene changes behind the traveler curtain, where the usual audible and visual distractions of scene changes occur.
Expanding on the use of Bacchus Theatre, I appreciated the house usage in terms of going through and around the audience. During the middle of the song “Our Love Is God,” when Kurt and Ram are being killed by JD, after Ram is shot, JD chases Kurt around the audience while in his underwear. This is a very funny visual until Veronica realizes Ram has been shot by a real bullet and is dead. Though I believe that this scene has its own issues with confusing and contradictory emotions that I didn’t necessarily enjoy, the visual itself is nevertheless creative.
This use of the house and audience is also used for dramatic affect as well. As an example, the song “Yo Girl,” the precursor to the famous song of JD’s mental breakdown “Meant To Be Yours,” is not only an amazing use of house interaction, but is the best designed scene in terms of dramatic impact. This scene is the introduction to the climax of the show. Veronica’s world is imploding around her. Her best friend attempted suicide. Her boyfriend is trying to kill her. Her parents want to send her to an abusive mental hospital. The voices of those who she is responsible for the death for are only getting louder and louder in her consciousness, joined by a chorus of her classmates invading her mind. While all three of those who have passed are surrounding her on stage, the ensemble surrounding the audience wearing 3D glasses is only getting louder. This allows the audience to understand the mindset of Veronica—the feeling of desperation, overwhelming guilt, and overstimulation as the consequences of all of her past transgressions are crashing down on her all at once. We feel all of these emotions before a breathtakingly believable performance by Ben Seifer in “Meant To Be Yours” delivers us into the climax.
Heathers has an incredibly fluid ensemble as they are tasked with semi-realistically recreating a living social environment within themselves. I can confidently say that Brianna Salica and Nick Brenton succeeded and then some. Intentionally creating a social ecosystem complete with cliques, intricate hierarchies, and incredible amounts of realism. I could truly tell who’s friends with who, who’s popular, and who’s a total outcast, all from one viewing of the show.
Conclusion
Every single part of this show feels deliberate and necessary. Unlike most community theatre, I never got the impression that anything existed as filler or for scene changes behind the traveller. Both the pacing and the speed are top-notch in this production. The speed feels perfect for the content in the show, with the dialogue flowing naturally between characters and scenes. Scene changes were either smooth or not even noticeable. The pacing of the show felt equally as natural, with the dialogue specifically never allowing itself to feel as if it’s dragging the feet of the story or flying by the audience. Everything at their disposal did not go unused, every prop and set piece and aspect of the small Bacchus stage is used to its full potential.
As they are a university-affiliated theatre company, I would strongly argue that HTAC should consider moving to a larger, more formal playing space such as the Thompson Theatre, or to a recital hall in and around Roselle Center for the Arts. I want to stress how insane it is that every single night sold out on online ticket sales and that there was a 30+ person-line 45 minutes before doors opened to try to get tickets for a Saturday matinee, the show that I attended. All I have left to say is congratulations and I cannot wait to see what HTAC has in store for us next with their production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Rating: 9.3/10