Words by Melissa Blease
At Theatre Royal until Saturday 26 April
A musical based on a film based on a book: take that and party, Charades fans!
Rather surprisingly given that Cruel Intentions is strapline-billed as ‘The 90s Musical’, Take That have nothing to do with this production. But hey, the Manchester marvels have already been honoured by not one but two jukebox musicals (Never Forget and Greatest Days, the latter also adapted for a film version). And anyway, TT’s saccharine-sweet power-pop blockbusters wouldn’t really fit into a track list that takes the ‘darker’ hits from a Top of the Pops line-up circa summer 1995 (Garbage, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, The Verve, Placebo, et al) and shoehorns them into a this glossy teen-angst chronicle based on Roger Kumble’s glossy 1999 romantic teen drama movie, itself inspired by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s epic 18th century yarn Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
If you’ve seen any of the nostalgia-fix jukebox musicals of the Back to the Future/Rock of Ages/We Will Rock You/Heathers the Musical (particularly, in this instance, the latter) genre that have dominated West End and regional stages over the last 20-odd years, you’ll be familiar with the Cruel Intentions recipe for success.
Take two glamorous teenage step-siblings with vile-but-fun, devious personalities and set them against an upmarket New York backdrop during the summer vacation. Add a couple of super-sweet, easily corruptible girls, an uber-matriarch and handful of personality-laden classmate cohorts to the mix, season well with hefty sprinkles of secrets, lies and temptations, and add a wicked wager to the whole affair… all supported by, of course, that evocative playlist.
Nic Myers goes to the top of the class for her portrayal of nefarious anti-heroine Kathryn Merteuil: viler than Cruella de Vil, sharper-clawed than Catwomanand showcasing a voice that does more justice to the show’s greatest hits than most of the original artistes ever managed to do.
As her equally unscrupulous, dishonourable step-brother Sebastian Valmont, Will Callan just about manages to keep up with her, his patter just about smooth enough and his machismo just about brooding enough to convince us of his babe-magnetism. As Sebastian’s will she/won’t she paramour Annette Hargrove, Abbie Budden gives us a perfectly-balanced virtuous/mettle-laden second leading lady, while Luke Conner Hall is a deliciously camp Blaine Tuttle and Lucy Carter does a grand job of updating The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Janet Weiss for a whole new audience with lashings of humour and wit.
Despite moments when the plot feels as though it’s been reduced to mere bullet points to punctuate the songs (and some fabulous all-singing, all-dancing high points), the whole production sashays along with the swagger, confidence and energy of The Spice Girls at their peak — and of course, there’s one of their songs in the mix too.
Next stop: Ed Sheeran — The Monologues? Taylor Swift — The Soap Opera? If meta is where we’re at right now, Cruel Intentions is riding the wave.
