When it comes to suspension of disbelief, the original Cruel Intentions movie was already something of a big ask. Basically Dangerous Liaisons for teens, transplanting the plotting and scheming of the pre-Revolution French court onto 1990s American high-schoolers is already deflating the stakes. In the former, Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil’s plans to disgrace the honour of innocent Cecile de Volange and the devoutly religious Madame de Tourvel have implications among the most powerful in their society. Here, well - it’s high school. Once you graduate, you never have to see any of these people again.
The original movie is less of a classic than others in the ‘modern adaptations of classic literature’ craze that swept 90s cinema - it’s no Clueless or 10 Things I Hate About You. But it has a certain catty, soap-operaesque appeal that we’d later see with the rise of serials like Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars. It was flawed, but credit where it’s due, it was distinct. In the transfer from film to stage musical, however, those flaws are thrown into much sharper relief. Set against a jukebox soundtrack of 90s hits that range from somewhat well-orchestrated to laughably incongruous, Cruel Intentions: The Musical adds faults of its own to an already flimsy premise, stretching it past breaking point.
Here, Valmont (Will Callan) and Merteuil (Nic Myers) are Upper-East Side step-siblings (and anyone that’s spent time on the Internet knows what that ‘step’ implies). The pair make a wager that notorious high-school lothario Valmont can seduce naive young Cecile Caldwell (Lucy Carter), but at the same time, Valmont finds himself genuinely falling for published abstinence advocate Annette Hargrove (played on the night by Olivia Brookes), whom he initially plans to seduce as a challenge for himself. The original movie is steeped in Gen X cynicism, but then, so was Heathers, and that still found a way to strike a balance in its move to the stage. Here, however, things just aren’t clicking - there isn’t so much one glaring flaw as lots of little misses that add up in a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ sort of way.
There are certainly positives to point out. Our opening number ‘Livin La Vida Loca’ sets us up with some tight harmonies and high-energy choreography going into the action. I really enjoyed Nic Myers’ more campy moments as Kathryn Merteuil, particularly her exaggerated snorting of the coke contained in her rosary necklace. At her best, she reminds me a lot of Kathryn Hahn, both is her comic timing and her hair-raising belt; if there’s a production of Reefer Madness happening anytime soon, get Myers on the horn.
Lucy Carter is also almost uncomfortably committed to Cecile’s goofy naivete. Her amped-up silliness actually sort of works with the tacked-on nature of the musical numbers - this does seem like someone who would burst into a 30-second rendition of ‘I Saw The Sign’ after having their first orgasm, or embarrassingly gyrate to Boyz II Men’s ‘I’ll Make Love To You’. And special props must go to the blossoming romance between Valmont’s loud and proud token gay pal Blaine Tuttle (Luke Conner Hall) and closeted jock Greg McConnell (Joe Simmons), the only couple I was at all emotionally invested in. Their renditions of ‘Wannabe’, ‘Sex and Candy’ and ‘Bye Bye Bye’ might only be tenuously connected to what’s actually occurring in the plot, but they perform it with such energy and flair it almost didn’t matter. In those fleeting moments, I saw the musical I wanted to see; a Team Starkid-style tongue-in-cheek send-up of how seriously the original took itself.
But there, we run into problems, because this musical does take itself too seriously with a clunky melodrama that clashes jarringly with the poppy recognisability of its score. Choreography-wise, things start strong but dip in energy as the show goes on, and in terms of delivery, the cast’s American accents are passable but shaky. The romance between Sebastian and Annette feels so forced and inorganic - one second she’s turning down his overtures, a scene later she’s strolling around his aunt’s house in a swimsuit? Any scene between them feels like the same rehashed conversation, and there’s absolutely no chemistry - never before have I seen a New Theatre audience dead silent at ‘the big kiss’ between a leading pair, and you can tell they were expecting that silence to be filled. And not to spoil the finale, but Sebastian’s ultimate fate is an act of God that comes out of absolute nowhere and provides this limp romance with a totally unsatisfying conclusion. A lot of these criticisms are true of the film as well, but the heightened spectacle of the musical only magnifies its lack of depth.
Will Callan’s vocals are decent, but I simply don’t buy him as a guy that could bring any woman to her knees; more a guy who thinks his barista is into him because she’s contractually obligated to be nice. There’s something so blandly serious in his delivery, accompanied by movement from the ‘aggressively rubbing the back of the neck to convey emotion’ school of acting. It says something when at Sebastian’s emotional rock bottom, the first strains of ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls start playing and you hear multiple people in the audience audibly chuckle.
Cruel Intentions falls into the classic jukebox trap of choosing songs that are only tangentially related to what’s going on onstage, often missing the point of both. Annette is introduced singing No Doubt’s ‘Just A Girl’, the punkish tone of which is utterly at odds with Annette’s pragmatic and sensible characterisation. The spark of love between Cecile and her cello teacher Ronald Clifford (Kevin Yates) prompts a duet on, of all things, Deep Blue Something’s ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, in which an unhappy couple grasp for things they have in common before desperately settling on one movie they kind of like. Not only a horrible analogy for this young romance, but also not backed up by the text - WHERE have these two bonded over Breakfast at Tiffany's? You can’t pick a song with such specificity in its lyrics and not expect your audience to have questions when you do nothing to adapt it to your text.
We were also treated to maybe the most embarrassing rendition of ‘No Scrubs’ I’ve ever seen, performed by Annette’s WASP mother Bunny Caldwell. Maybe the cringe is to highlight her character’s overt racism, but in-universe, are we implying this Upper East Side country clubber is a regular listener to TLC? It does lead to a great line from Ronald I did grin at (“If you live at home with your Mama..” “I’m 19 years old!”), but that alone doesn’t warrant its inclusion. And given that she’s one of the most irredeemable characters in the cast, why is she then allowed to be part of Kathryn’s comeuppance chorus in the big finale? Did she have a redemption arc backstage we’re not aware of?
Cruel Intentions relies on nostalgia and iconicity to fill in its cracks, and if you just want to rock out to some 90s bangers or mouth along to the movie’s best lines, knock yourself out. As for me, I’m going to whack on 10 Things I Hate About You and pray that it’s not sacrificed to the jukebox gods anytime soon.