No one can top Wisteria Theater these days when it comes to downscaling big-stage/big-budget Broadway musicals to intimate proportions while maintaining maximum entertainment value. Case in point, their fetch and fabulous take on Mean Girls The Musical.

There had, of course, been some not-so-nice female high schoolers on the big screen before Regina George and The Plastics ruled over North Shore High in the Tina Fey-scribed 2004 movie blockbuster Mean Girls, but perhaps only Heathers Chandler, Duke, and McNamara wreaked more havoc on a student body than Queen Bee Regina, approval seeker Gretchen Wieners, and IQ-deprived Karen Smith did fifteen years later.

And Cady Heron wasn’t the first outsider to find herself suddenly a member of the most famed and feared clique in school. (I’m guessing Fey was already familiar with Heathers’ Veronica Sawyer when she created her.)

Whatever the case, nothing about Cady’s (Lexi Collins) parents’ expat life in Kenya could have prepared her for high school in the U.S.A., though at the very least she’s got self-described “art freak” Janis Sarkisian (Shelby Miguel) and “too gay to function” Damian Hubbard (Omari Miller) beside her to guide her through the jungle that is North Shore High.

What Cady doesn’t expect is for Regina (Renee Wylder) and her subservient besties Gretchen (Armie Jane) and Karen (Arianna Nelson) to take her under their wing and remake her in their image.

Further complicating matters is the crush Cady immediately develops on hunky classmate Aaron Samuels (Jordan Iosua Taylor), who just happens to be Regina’s ex.

Talk about a recipe for impending disaster, and a whole lot of singing and dancing along the way.

Fey’s book may lack some of the bite of the her 2004 script, but that doesn’t make Mean Girls The Musical any less entertaining or cathartic for anyone who ever wished revenge on a high school nemesis.

Also largely missing from Mean Girls (The Musical) are the kind of memorable hooks that made the scores of previous teen musicals Legally Blonde, Hairspray, and the aforementioned Heathers so eminently hummable. (I love you Tina, but was your husband Jeff Richmond really the right composer for this show?)

On the plus side, Nell Benjamin’s lyrics are as clever as they get, and Fey’s distinctively oddball sense of humor scores laugh after laugh after laugh.

Having just caught a Broadway-scale-and-caliber Mean Girls down in La Mirada, I was excited to see how Wisteria would take a show that normally features cast of 24, trim it down to 14 performers in all, and bring the whole shebang to life on a stage only a fraction of the size of its previous incarnation’s playing area at only a fraction of the budget.

Needless to say, Wisteria has not disappointed, with director Megan Ripchik, scenic designer Sydni Sawyer, screen designer Tyler Angier, costumes-and-props designers Lexi Collins and Renée Wylder, and lighting and sound designer Josh Collins combining talents to bring Mean Girls to life with an abundance of imagination and visual flash. (Special snaps to the multitude of ways a bunch of blue-and-gold tables get configured and reconfigured to take us from classroom to bedroom to gymnasium to girls’ bathroom to locker room to the North Shore Mall and beyond.)

Still, even the cleverest direction and design does not a hit musical make without triple-threat talent to match, and once again Wisteria has hit the bullseye by casting its very own showrunners Wylder and Collins as two of the most iconic characters ever featured in the high school movie canon.

Lusciously leggy and with a belt to reach the rafters, Wylder’s Regina George is a queen bee mean girl you do not want to mess with and Collins matches her every step of the way as the most delightfully dorky of outsiders.

Jane is terrific as the outwardly confident, inwardly insecure Gretchen, the marvelous Nelson turns Karen’s dumbness into her most endearing asset, and high school dreamboats don’t get any dreamer (or sing more gorgeously) than Taylor’s Aaron.

Miguel is on fire as the unapologetically truth-telling Janis and Miller is simply too fabulous for words as the outset-and-proudest gay boy any high school has ever known.

Lia Peros and local ubiquity king Christopher Thume earn MVP awards for shape-shifting from the former’s best-teacher ever Ms. Norbury to Cady’s new-agey mother to Regina’s role model of a mom, and from the latter’s exasperated principal Mr. Duvall to inept sex-educating Coach Carr.

Not only that but they join the raptastic Raaghav Thatte (Kevin G.), featured dancer Emma Busby, Allegra Greenawalt, Ali Hoghoughi, and Johnathon O’Neal in executing Choreographer of the Year Madison Mia Hwa Oliver’s consistently high-energy and virtually nonstop dance moves while vocalizing to perfection to prerecorded tracks under Nolan Monsibay’s expert music direction. (Kris Bramson understudies the roles of Janis and Regina.)

Even minus tunes to get audiences humming as they leave the theater, Mean Girls The Musical is about as entertaining as a 21st-century Broadway show can get, and arriving in North Hollywood just in time to heat up the summer, this June-July-August winner is one more example of Wisteria Theater at its crowd-pleasing best.

Wisteria Theater, 7061 Vineland Ave, North Hollywood. Through August 16. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 3:00. See website for additional weeknight performances.
www.wisteriatheater.com

–Steven Stanley
June 26, 2026

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Jeff Richmond, Los Angeles Theater Review, Nell Benjamin, Tina Fey, Wisteria Theater