Cruel Intentions: The 90s Musical, The Other Palace Theatre review ★★★★★

It’s been almost a decade since writer-director Rober Kumble, with the help of fellow creators Jordan Ross and Lindsey Rosin, turned his cult 1999 teen movie Cruel Intentions into a jukebox musical. But it’s only now that a production has popped up in London, opening at Off West End venue The Other Palace.

Based on 1988’s period drama Dangerous Liaisons, itself inspired by the 1782 French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses, the story follows the icky relationship between wealthy Manhattanite step-siblings Sebastian and Kathryn, both hell-bent on outdoing the other’s sexual misdeeds. Sebastian is determined to ‘screw’ the new headmaster's chaste daughter Annette before school starts, while Kathryn is hoping to defame another innocent newbie, Cecile.

To many millennial teens and tweens, the movie was something of a lust-soaked anti-Bible on sexual manipulation, watched in the dead of night at sleepovers and quoted on repeat. The musical follows the movie blow-by-blow, line-for-line, and with its 90s soundtrack – shot through with hits by Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, NSYNC and The Verve – it’s appealing to the same audience, now all grown up and, perhaps, a little bit nostalgic.

Cruel Intentions cast. Pamela Raith Photography

This UK reboot is stylistically undemanding and plays out on designer Polly Sullivan’s circular, chequered stage, with the Manhattan skyline peeping through high up windows to locate the story.

Most of the songs are a decent fit, even if they’re cut short or reduced to only a verse or two. The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ and Placebo’s ‘Every You, Every Me’ – two of the movie’s favourite anthems – are natural inclusions, as is Meredith Brooks’ ‘Bitch’, triumphantly snarled through here by Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky’s Kathryn. But others are painfully shoehorned in or brazenly on the nose. During the memorable kissing tutorial, the stage show has McCaulsky and Rose Galbraith’s Cecile break into Sixpence None the Richer’s ‘Kiss Me’. Yes, really.

The second half is overstuffed musically, but at least these sung-through interludes offer the film’s sidelined gay romance between Blaine (Josh Barnett) and Greg (Barney Wilkinson) to be more playfully explored. A late addition to the score in director Jonathan O’Boyle’s production gives the pair an extra, joyful, fittingly British rendition of Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’.

Cruel Intentions. Pamela Raith Photography

It’s in the hands of a cast who are clearly committed. McCaulsky brings sultry, breathy snakiness to calm-headed, cocaine-sniffing Kathryn. Daniel Bravo is smouldering as Sebastian, and surely earns bonus points for looking the spit of his on-screen counterpart, Ryan Phillippe. Squeaky clean Abbie Budden brings strong vocals to the part of Annette, while Galbraith is show-stealing as gawky Cecile, carrying the show’s awkward sexual awakening scenes and landing their humour.

It’s a story that doesn’t hold up by today’s more stringent morality standards, and O’Boyle addresses this by presenting a production that winks nostalgically at the erawhile holding the plot's venom at arm's length. No scene is played too seriously, but as a result, the show is not as sexy as the movie. Still, whoops from the press night audience suggest its two hours of throwbacks will continue to be readily received.