Based on the iconic 1989 cult film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers the Musical drops us into Westerberg High, a world where social standing carries the weight of life and death. Veronica Sawyer starts out invisible, just another student longing to matter, until the three glamorous but ruthless Heathers pull her into their orbit and her fantasy of popularity briefly becomes reality. That fantasy curdles once J.D. shows up: a brooding new arrival who convinces her that invisibility might be safer than the alternative.
The musical began life on stage in Los Angeles in 2013 before moving to New York’s New World Stages the following year. A 2018 London production reworked the score and script, and the show has gone on to enjoy several West End runs and three UK and Ireland tours, picking up the 2019 WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Musical along the way. It’s currently also playing across Australia and New Zealand and New York.
Heathers has never really struggled to find an audience. Its fanbase is large, young and devoted, and the score is so gleefully campy that it barely matters what state a production is in: people turn out for it regardless. That’s certainly true of this touring version, currently making its way around the UK and Ireland and calling in at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal this week. It gives audiences the Heathers they already know and love, delivered by a genuinely strong cast, even if the direction doesn’t always dig beneath the surface.
Gerardine Sacdalan’s Veronica is the standout of the night vocally. She’s assured throughout, but it’s in the bigger numbers that she really shows what she can do: her performance of “I Say No” is genuinely exceptional, full of the kind of control and emotional weight that makes the character’s crisis of conscience land. It’s the moment the show is building towards, and she delivers it.
Liberty Stottor’s Heather Chandler dominates the first half with real presence and exactly the “mythic bitch” energy the role demands, matched by vocals that are nothing short of sublime. There’s a sense, watching this early in the tour, that she’ll only grow more comfortable leaning into the camp of her later scenes as the run continues; what’s there already is more than enough to be getting on with.
Jessica Ibadin, making her professional debut as Heather Duke, brings a strong vocal range to the part. “Never Shut Up Again” has a reputation for being a difficult number to pull off cleanly, and plenty of performers have come unstuck on it, but she handled it with real skill, confidence and vocal prowess on the night, making it look far easier than it is.
Lou Henry’s Heather McNamara takes a bolder, more self-assured approach to the character than audiences will typically be used to. It suits the comedy of the role well, and she lands laughs with real ease throughout. The trade-off comes in “Lifeboat”, where that established confidence occasionally sits at odds with the raw vulnerability the song provides. That’s more a tension in how the character is written than anything to do with the performance itself; there isn’t an easy way to play both notes at once, and she does well with the material she’s got.
Elsewhere, Veronica Carabai’s Mrs Fleming is a highlight in her own right: a powerful voice paired with sharp comic instincts, especially in her audience interaction moment, which she milks for all it’s worth without ever overplaying it. Markus Södergren’s Kurt Kelly and Beau Jackson’s Ram Sweeney build a convincing, easy chemistry as a pair, selling the dim-witted camaraderie the script asks of them. The wider ensemble clearly work hard throughout, carrying a lot of the show’s energy in group numbers.
On the staging side, the choreography in Act One occasionally tips into overkill, and it doesn’t always land as cleanly as it should. A few members of the cast fall out of sync with each other, and there are moments where steps get missed entirely. At points it looks as though performers are concentrating so hard on hitting their marks or their vocal lines that the movement stops feeling natural and starts feeling effortful. Act Two dials things back, and the show is stronger for the change of pace.
The direction more broadly leans hard on cliché, reducing several of the characters down to a single defining trait rather than letting them breathe. The effect is that a lot of the nuance that could be there gets flattened out. It’s a shame, because the cast are clearly capable of more than the production is asking of them, and there are glimpses throughout of performances that could go deeper given the chance.
None of that stops this from being a great night out. The score remains as infectious as ever, the cast are vocally excellent across the board, and the show’s devoted fanbase will leave more than satisfied. Anyone hoping for a production that finds fresh depth in the material may come away wanting a little more, but as pure entertainment, this delivers exactly what it promises.
Heathers the Musical plays at the Theatre Royal Nottingham until Saturday 12th September 2026 where it continues its UK tour well in 2027.
Photography throughout from Pamela Raith.
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