By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Living among the wildlife in a preserve in Kenya in no way has prepared Cady for life in wilds of a suburban high school just north of Chicago.
She does know about apex predators and is quick to see that in the world of the high school that’s just what Regina, the queen bee of the Plastics.
In the musical version as of the hit movie “Mean Girls” we follow the path of this lovely, naive math whiz on her journey to become that apex predator among the North Shore High Lions.
“Mean Girls” is being staged as 3B Productions’ annual summer teen show July 14 through July 17, with shows Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m. in the Maumee Indoor Theatre. (Conant Street in now open.)
Directed by Joe Barton with music direction by Kelly Frailly and choreography Bob Marzola, “Mean Girls (High School Version)” is the 15th summer production staged by 3B starting back in 2007 with “The High School Musical.” (With two summers off because of the pandemic.)
This is, Barton said, a darker, truer version of high school dynamics.
One way to think about “Mean Girls” is as a TV nature special with the high schoolers being the animals being studied.
Our guides are Janis (Maggie Titus) and Damian (Gavin Miller), two outcasts who float around the edges of the school’s social hierarchy. In a place fueled by hormones and traditional gender norms, they don’t fit in. He’s a flamboyantly gay, and she, with her dark Goth wear, is ambiguous, and suspected by her peers of being a lesbian, earning the nickname, “The Space Dyke.”
Janis and Damian take Cady (Annabelle Welsh) under their wing. Nobody really cares about this newcomer who hasn’t found her place. Even the teachers brush her off when she corrects their pronunciation of her first name.
Janis and Damian give Cady a tour of the landscape and various herds of teenage prey and predators.
Finally introducing the Plastics. The clique orbits around Regina (Whitney Bechstein) with doting sycophants Gretchen (Jordan Saldua), who is there so Regina always has someone nearby to belittle, and Karen Smith (Riley Higgins) who is the ditsy, sleep-around party girl. Regina reigns not only over the Plastics but the school.
When the occasion arises, Janis and Damian use Cady to pry into the Plastics and bring them down.
The slyly written script by Tina Fey manages to be both deeply observant and funny.
The score is filled with contemporary musical theater anthems in which the characters bare their deepest insecurities and boldest dreams. The songs help the characters develop over time, or at least put a little shading into the stereotypes they represent. That holds true for even the adult characters. Regina’s mother, aptly given no first name, present herself not as an ordinary mom but “a cool mom.” But she sings of the emotional travails of a mother from being the center of her daughter’s life to becoming a distant satellite. She seems oblivious to the monster she’s created.
The adults at North Shore notably the principal (Hezekiah Smith) and especially calculus teacher Ms. Norbury (Rose Walters) do their best not to turn out monsters. Walters is particularly believable as a young teacher who blends toughness with vulnerability. Ms. Norbury is a stealth figure at first seemingly just a butt of jokes. Her character insinuates herself into the plot until she and Cady share the rousing duet “Do This Thing” before the math championships.
Welsh is well cast in the lead. From “Stupid with Love,” where she first toys with her flirtation with Aaron (Ben Tittl) through “More is Better,” her attempt to seduce Aaron, who has become distant, she shows us believably how this character seemingly has changed. Her deceit is born of her lack of guile more than intentional machinations of other people. Still, it results into a full-scale riot among the female student body of North Shore High. Bechstein tears it up as Regina seeks revenge in “World Burns.”
Cady goes from faking not knowing anything about math to finding redemption as the math whiz she is. That triumph of spirit and character is expressed in the rousing closing numbers “I See Stars,” where she seeks to lift everyone up.
That includes the audience. People may revel or cringe at their high school memories, but with a cast of talented teens telling the tale, they will certainly be entertained to revisit those years in “Mean Girls.”
