Tina Fey’s Mean Girls musical updates her teen comedy with social media - and features a Karen you can cheer for. But is it #Fetch?

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• Title: Mean Girls
• Book by: Tina Fey
• Music by: Jeff Richmond
• Lyrics by: Nell Benjamin
• Director: Casey Nicholaw
• Actors: English Bernhardt, Nadina Hassan, Jasmine Rogers
• Company: Mirvish Productions
• Venue: Princess of Wales Theatre
• City: Toronto, Ont.
• Year: Runs to Nov. 27, 2022

American teen culture has always been a quickly moving target – easier to nail down in the moment on the screen than on the stage.

Consider the fact that Grease, one of the original and more enduring high-school musicals, was set in 1959 and premiered in its first theatrical iteration in 1971. The greaser subculture had disappeared and become the subject of a nostalgic over-the-shoulder glance in the span of just 12 years.

A longer period of time passed between Tina Fey’s Mean Girls coming out in movie theatres in 2004, and the Broadway premiere of its musical version in 2018.

The 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt creator’s own stage adaptation of her cherished teen comedy – the pandemic-interrupted touring production of which is now playing in Toronto courtesy of Mirvish Productions – did not choose the easy route of an early-2000′s nostalgia ride, however.

Instead, Fey and songwriters Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin attempted to do something trickier: create a teen musical that takes place in “the present” but recycles enough of the old screenplay’s situations and laugh-lines to appeal to hardcore fans.

The result is a Frankenstein that, especially after five more years have passed, feels neither now nor then – despite the addition of social media and updated pink looks by costume designer Gregg Barnes in director Casey Nicholaw’s production.

But the monster nevertheless lives – with many satisfying fresh jokes that reflect Fey’s distinct sense of humour and the underlying enduring message of the need for girls to stick together.

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Mean Girls, in musical form, retains essentially the same plot as the movie. Sixteen-year-old Cady Heron (English Bernhardt) arrives at North Shore High School in Evanston, Ill., after having been homeschooled in Kenya by zoologist parents for most her life – and approaches her new environment through the lens of animal science.

With the help of art weirdos Janis (Lindsay Heather Pearce, alternating with two other actors on this Toronto stop) and Damian (Eric Huffman), Cady starts identifying and classifying the packs of animals in the cafeteria from the mathletes to the “sexually active band nerds” to various species of jocks.

This leads Cady to a clique known as the Plastics, led by Regina George (Nadina Hassan) – who Cady quickly identifies as the school’s “Apex Predator”; cue a song of that title – and fleshed out by followers Gretchen (Jasmine Rogers) and Karen.

Cady first infiltrates these hot, rich girls at the behest of grudge-bearing Janis, but gradually assimilates, leading to a series of complications. Oh, and there’s also the matter of a boy named Aaron (the charming Adante Carter).

The list of teen movies turned into musicals by producers chasing the Wicked demographic is long: In just the past decade or so, Cruel Intentions, Heathers, Clueless and Bring it On have landed with songs on- or off-Broadway.

Mean Girls has always stood apart, and stands apart from their musical adaptations too, because of Fey’s whip-smart wit – and the fact that its depiction of high-school dynamics is based on a work of popular sociology (Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes).

The addition of songs, however, is of mixed effect especially for the characters Cady and Regina. The sounds referenced in Richmond’s score can be quite surprising: Cady’s early songs have a Graceland-era Paul Simon feel, while Regina’s big number is a bombastic James Bond-style anthem. But Benjamin’s lyrics, while ambitious and smart, don’t always come out of mouths smoothly. (Regina’s songs are, in fact, unintelligible in large sections as Hassan has prioritized a slinky sound over meaning.)

In terms of new material in the musical, insecure Gretchen (Rogers is sweet in the role) is one of the primary beneficiaries. She has an amusing, recurring song called What’s Wrong With Me? and is also armed with great new lines, such as her admonishment to Cady, who arrives at a Halloween party dressed scary instead of sexy: “If you don’t dress slutty, that’s ‘slut shaming’ us.”

Karen, though, has become the stand-out secondary character. Grace Romanello, the Karen understudy I saw in for Morgan Ashley Bryant in the show’s final preview in Toronto, nailed every pose and punchline in this subversive depiction of the stereotype known as the “dumb blonde.”

In terms of comedic chops in this cast, I also have to shout out Kabir Bery, who plays a rapping mathlete named Kevin G. He’s doing such a wicked satirical impression of Hamilton/In the Heights actor Anthony Ramos and hip-hoptimism in general that I laughed every time he appeared.

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What doesn’t work in this combination update/retread? Well, Mean Girls’ infamous Burn Book – a scrapbook important to the plot in which the Plastics write down rumours – seems a tad anachronistic. Certainly, a climax built around the photocopying of pages in order to spread its contents feels like an analog plot line dropped into a digital world, given we’ve already seen a talent-show disaster go viral.

But some of Fey and her collaborators’ takes on social media resonate stronger – notably a very dark joke about Karen sending a boy “nudes.” This was such a successful moment in fact – shocking, funny and ultimately leading to cheers from the audience – that it only made me wish Fey had used her rare star screenwriter status to craft something entirely original about teen girls.