Mean Girls review by Nina Jervis-Green

July 15, 2026

Thanks to Nina Jervis-Green from www.ninathewriter.com for this review.

There’s a home-made quality to Mean Girls that made me think of going to see my friends’ children perform in their school plays. The set is minimalist, props (like school desks) are wheeled on by the cast, and there are plenty of OTT American accents to marvel at.

I still haven’t seen Tina Fey’s 2004 film (nor its 2024 remake). Yet terms like “fetch” (which means “cool”… apparently it came from Britain), “fugly”, and “acting like a Plastic” became part of the mid-Noughties’ vernacular in a way that made me feel like I actually had seen it, many times. In a way, it was good to finally see the story behind it all.

I say “in a way” because there isn’t much story to speak of. Naïve, homeschooled teen Cady Heron (a shy-yet-sassy Emily Lane) moves from Kenya to Illinois, where she’s thrown into a high school that feels more like a bear pit: ruled by the Plastics clique and its iconic Queen Bee, Regina George, with more bitchy barbs than the Mail Online comments section.

Will Regina get her comeuppance? Will Cady conquer all? Let’s face it, you probably already know. The theatre swooned with nostalgic adults and excited teens, and my best friend Vickie – also my companion for the evening – confided that she used to watch the film with her now-grown-up daughter. Groans of recognition greeted Mrs. George (the multi-talented Faye Tozer of Steps fame, in one of three roles) as she sang her sozzled mother’s lament about Regina no longer noticing or appreciating her.

More nostalgia comes in the form of Karim Zeroual – a popular CBBC presenter of yore – in the role of ‘Mathlete’ Kevin Ganatra, which he plays with peppy gusto. And anyone who has ever been a teenage girl will recognise the natural high-school hierarchies and rigid social rules on display here (fact: the Plastics only wear their hair in a ponytail once a week). I couldn’t help feeling heart-heavy pangs of recognition at the girls’ collective, desperate need to fit in.

Fey’s dialogue is delightfully funny and acerbic throughout, and the performances are all on point, particularly Vivian Panka’s as the monstrous Regina, and Max Gill’s as the puppyish, “almost too gay to function” Damian Hubbard. Yet as with a lot of similar films-turned-musicals, I kept feeling the need to question: did this need to be a musical at all? Most of the songs (with music by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond and lyrics by Nell Benjamin) simply watered down all that wonderful razor-sharp dialogue, without adding anything to the story.

But perhaps I’m being too critical. As a non-devotee of the film, and as someone without children, this show isn’t designed for me. The people for whom it’s actually designed went crazy throughout; whooping joyfully at the endless in-references and giving the cast a rousing standing ovation at the end.

Feeling curious, I chatted with a couple of pink-clad Gen Z-ers and their parents on my way out of the theatre. All of them showered glittering buckets of praise over the film and the show… so clearly, for the right audience, Mean Girls is just totally grool.