First Night Recap: Mean Girls (Savoy Theatre)

Written by Raphael Kohn

Get in, losers. Mean Girls: The Musical has finally made its way from Broadway to the West End and is open in previews at the Savoy Theatre. Tickets sold fast – much of the preview period is sold out – but I was lucky enough to be able to go to the first preview. So, I am your eyes and ears in that very special, first-ever British audience for this musical. Here’s EVERYTHING you want to know about that preview that was so, so fetch.

Let’s be clear what we’re doing here: this is an informal, fun, photo-heavy first look at what went down at the first preview. No reviewing here, no opinions. Those will come later after the official Press Night of the show in a few weeks’ time.

Now that’s out the way, let’s open the burn book together.

Walking down the Strand, the show’s distinctive white-and-pink branding is plastered all over the side of the building, surrounded in lights. You can’t miss it, especially when it gets dark outside.

On the first night, we had the Pink Carpet laid out for attendees, and I got to walk down it. There were Mean Girls-branded London Taxis along the road, and plenty of cool photo opportunities. I was fortunate to get photos on the pink carpet itself!

Next to the box office is a big digital screen with revolving lists of the creative team, cast and production team. Here’s what it looks like:

Programmes are available everywhere, printed on nice, high-quality paper. Inside you’ll find the song list for the new production (yep, they’ve been tinkering with the show since its Broadway run) and loads of information on the cast and creatives.

My seat was in the Grand Circle, so for those of you sitting up there, you’ll go through the same separate entrance that I went through. The Stalls and the Dress Circle are accessed through the main entrance – if you’re going there, you’ll have lots of features to see! But for us Grand Circle people, they’ve still got a lot of treats before you even sit in your seat – read on…

There’s a lot of merch on offer, and it all looks so incredibly FETCH! There’s a tote bag. There are t-shirts. There are hoodies. There are keyrings. There are buttons. There’s a cup. There are stickers. You want a merch item with Mean Girls branding? Yeah, they’ve probably got it. Here’s the full selection, prices, and a QR code for their online shop:

At the top of the stairs to the Grand Circle bar, there’s another photo opportunity, this time with a ‘Burn Book’ background. Take a snap there if you can!

The Grand Circle bar has been brilliantly redecorated as the ‘Plastics Bar’, decked out in pink.

To get there, you actually need to pass through the auditorium, but as it’s not ‘opened’ until 30 minutes before the show starts, they may send you directly into the bar to wait if you arrive before then.

The toilets have had a bit of a shake-up (yep, I took photos of that too. Not the toilets themselves, obviously. The mirrors.). I can’t comment on the womens’ (and I couldn’t find any all-gender toilets on that level but there might be some elsewhere in the theatre), but the men’s have had a dash of pink added to what you might be used to seeing in a mirror… 

For the theatre nerds like me, there’s a little model you pass by on the way into the auditorium: 

On the way in, I saw the ushers’ pre-show sign has had a makeover to the Mean Girls branding:

At the first preview they had printed everyone’s tickets out and left them out on your seat for you to keep. A nice little touch! Here’s mine (with personal details edited out):

And luckily for us Grand Circle folks, we get perfect sound quality up here thanks to the placement of a large sound and lighting rig up top:

Before the show, we had a speech from Sonia Friedman, onstage alongside writer Tina Fey, composer Jeff Richmond, director Casey Nicholaw and lyricist Nell Benjamin (from left to right). You can watch the whole speech on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@atdazzles/video/7377115493313940769?_t=8mxVY0lNb5U&_r=1

Or right here:

No spoilers for what you’ll see in the show and no opinions here, but expect poppy tunes, powerful belting vocals and high-energy choreography. It has a similar vibe to Heathers: The Musical, but where Heathers goes mostly rock, Mean Girls goes mostly pop. The stage is decked out in LED screens to add to the sets and give us some backdrops, and of course, there’s tonnes of pink… everywhere!

Here's what it looks like before the show starts:

There’s a nice touch as well in the North Shore High School interval curtain:

No photos or hints, but there are quite a few easter eggs hidden in the show. Particular references are found on t-shirts worn by the ensemble during dances; indeed, I think there are probably more easter eggs in the show than one person can notice in one viewing!

When the interval curtain lifts, we see this even more dramatic set of extracts from Regina’s Burn Book, soaked in deep pink.

The band are down at the front: ten names are listed in the programme, but from my seat, I could only see two guitarists, the drum kit, and the musical director/keyboardist’s hands. The reeds, brass and rest of the team are under a black roof on the right hand side of the stage (from my perspective), or otherwise out of my view.

And of course, it’s a musical comedy. Expect high-camp, pacy comedy, and some brilliant British Musical Theatre stars getting opportunities to really shine. Fans of Grace Mouat, Charlie Burn, Georgina Castle and Elèna Gyasi won’t be disappointed at all, while Tom Xander gets to flex his performing muscles in his role as Damian. Here’s some pictures (due to the lighting and camera angle, not the greatest image quality) from the curtain call:

They took their bows in front of a very enthusiastic standing ovation! Here’s the full video of the bows and exit music:

It was nice to have this show open on a Wednesday. After all, on Wednesdays, we wear pink. Look down at the stalls from the grand circle – almost everyone is in pink!

So there we have it, a most fetch first preview. You’ll have to wait until after the Press Night though, once the show is ‘frozen’ (they’ll be working on it during the preview period, so who knows what might change!).

Mean Girls is on at the Savoy Theatre for an open-ended run, currently booking into February 2025.

Tickets from (affiliate link):

https://prf.hn/click/camref:1100lpV2v/destination:https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/mean-girls/savoy-theatre/  

Photos and videos by Raphael Kohn, on behalf of All That Dazzles