Marie Claire
OMG we’re totally buggin’!
Clueless, the quintessential movie of ’90s adolescence, is in the works for a musical reprise for the 2018/2019 Off-Broadway season—this is the best news since Alicia Silverstone rocked Cher’s yellow plaid masterpiece on Lipsync Battle.
Amy Heckerling, the original writer, is at the helm of the score so fans can expect a reimagined musical masterpiece that will stay true to the OG movie we still binge watch three times a month. #nostalgia.
In addition to Heckerling, the show has some big names attached. Front and center for choreography is Kelly Devine (Come From Away), and Kristin Hanggi (Rock of Ages) will sit in the director’s chair for the musical’s November to December run in The New Group’s (TNG) 2018 to 2019 season. According to TNG, “with her [Amy Heckerling’s] singular voice, she gives us a score that reimagines ’90s hits into ingenious parodies and yearning monologues for her lovesick characters.”
With that description, it sounds like the musical will use the ’90s jams from the soundtrack, adapting them to make fun of the situations the characters in the movie find themselves in. As Clueless is a modern take on Jane Austen’s Emma, approaching the musical with a low-key parody theme and highlighting its absurdist nature is a genius way to fill the nostalgia factor while making it work in a 2018 setting. The website also provides the best description of Cher Horowitz in the history of ever: “Cher, a girl so psychotically optimistic she can’t see that her bungling attempts at playing Cupid disguise her own fashion-plated isolation.”
Heckerling picked a great time to throw Clueless, the Musical into the ring of movie musical adaptations—coming right off of the success of pop culture mashup musicals like Mean Girls and Spongebob, Clueless, the Musical will hopefully reach its own level of success to make its way to a longer run or potentially a Broadway debut (a girl’s gotta dream). Hopefully, it will last longer than Heathers the Musical. RIP.
This isn’t the first time a Clueless reboot was attempted—a TV show adaptation of the hit film aired from 1996 to 1999 with a moderate amount of success. The show was mostly recast, but some actors like Stacey Dash, Wallace Shawn, Donald Faison, and Elisa Donovan reprised their roles (respectively Dionne, Mr. Hall, Murray, and Amber). The half switched casting gave the show a bit of a weird vibe that gave the show a sort of desperate for success feel that is likely what led to its cancellation. It may have worked better if it was completely recast and presented as something new rather than a mismatch of old and new actors. It also doesn’t help that Josh was written out in the first season. Honestly, rude. Everything sort of fell flat after that.
Lucky for the musical, it’s a completely reimagined version of the OG with a new, fresh cast, attempted decades after the original (OMG when did we get so old?). Absence makes the heart grow fonder and this is so, totally gonna work! We hope. We’re not prudes, we’re just highly selective.
