GINGER TWINSIES
Orpheum Theatre
126 Second Ave. between Seventh & Eighth Sts.
Monday – Saturday through October 25, $49-$149
gingertwinsies.com

In Barry Levinson’s classic 1982 film Diner, Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) says to Boogie (Mickey Rourke), “Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”

I get that feeling at times in theater, especially at shows based on books or movies. While you don’t need to have read E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime, or seen Miloš Forman’s 1981 film adaptation in order to enjoy the current Broadway revival at Lincoln Center, it doesn’t hurt. However, my knowledge of such films as Some Like It Hot and Sunset Blvd. did negatively impact my enjoyment of the stage musicals; while artistic license must be granted, certain changes from the original just seemed plain awful, altering motivations and important points.

At the curtain call for Sunset Blvd., as most of the audience stood and cheered with wild applause, I turned to my friend and said, “Did they see the same show we did?” She shrugged in agreement.

I had similar experiences at two recent shows, each of which I liked, but not nearly as much as my fellow theatergoers, who were watching them at a different level.

Continuing at the Orpheum through October 25, Ginger Twinsies is a farcical love letter to Nancy Meyers’s 1998 film, The Parent Trap, in which Lindsay Lohan portrayed identical eleven-year-old twins Hallie Parker and Annie James, separated at birth and ignorant of each other’s existence until they meet at summer camp and decide to switch places. It’s a remake of David Swift’s 1961 original, which made a star of Hayley Mills and was based on Erich Kästner’s 1949 children’s book.

The play features a lot of satirical music, inside jokes, and Easter eggs for those in the know; for example, one of the actors portrays Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Lohan’s mother in the body-switching 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, which was based on Mary Rodgers’s 1972 novel. Also appearing as characters in Ginger Twinsies are Shirley Maclaine, who had some choice words about Lohan after the younger actress had to be pulled out of a film they were working on together; Julianne Moore, whose daughter looks like she could be Lohan’s twin; and Demi Moore, who spoke with Lohan at the 2025 Oscars. Whether you get the references or not, the connections are confusing.

Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds are hilarious as Annie and Hallie, respectively, from the get-go, as they don’t look anything alike. The show works best when it concentrates on the relationship between the two girls; numerous subplots with minor characters are overused as writer-director Kevin Zak attempts to squeeze too much into eighty minutes. I did eventually get into the flow once I realized there was no way I was going to get all of the jokes, but it’s still dispiriting to watch large portions of the audience laughing when you and others are scratching their heads.

HEATHERS THE MUSICAL
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 6, $72-$195
heathersthemusical.com
newworldstages.com

A different kind of cult fandom can be found at Heathers the Musical, a revival of the 2014 show based on Michael Lehmann’s 1988 teen romance-thriller. The iconic film featured Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer, a student at Westerburg High who joins the mean girls clique of Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty), Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) while falling for dangerous new guy J. D. Dean (Christian Slater, in his best Jack Nicholson impersonation).

I had seen the film some years back and was looking forward to the musical, which continues at New World Stages through January 25. But what I wasn’t expecting were the shrieks that rattled the theater for two and a half hours (with intermission). Huge screams accompanied the first appearance of many of the characters, and nearly every song, from “Beautiful” and “Candy Store” to “Veronica’s Chandler Nightmare” and “My Dead Gay Son,” turned into a sing-along, as all the young women around me blared the lyrics out loud, wearing huge smiles as they did.

Director Andy Fickman and choreographer Stephanie Klemons capture the essence of the film, although the book, by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe (they also wrote the music and lyrics), takes too many liberties with the plot, making changes that didn’t improve on the original, from altering who did what and combining multiple characters into one to commercializing the generic candy store and modifying the ending. However, thank goodness they corrected the spelling of the high school, which is named after Paul Westerberg of the Replacements.

The cast, which includes a terrific Lorna Courtney as Veronica, Casey Likes as J.D., Olivia Hardy as Heather Duke, Elizabeth Teeter as Heather McNamara, McKenzie Kurtz as Heather Chandler, Xavier McKinnon as Ram Sweeney, Erin Morton as Martha Dunnstock, and Tony nominee Kerry Butler as Ms. Fleming and Ms. Sawyer, is first rate, and the music is fun.

The story takes on added meaning in the wake of so many school shootings the past twenty years while also tackling the subject of teen suicide, but it doesn’t dive deep enough and takes off in directions that can drain certain scenes of their potency. But like Ginger Twinsies, despite its flaws, Heathers the Musical is worth seeing, at least in part for watching everyone else in the audience have an absolute ball even when there’s something going on that you don’t know about — a status of exclusion the mean girls of Heathers and cult theater insiders might actually relish.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]