Rock musicals are tricky things to pull off well. Shows such as The Toxic Avenger, The Lightning Thief and The Rocky Horror Show almost make it look easy. All you need is a silly idea, a thin plot, some memorable characters and some decent songs, and you’re set, right?
Alas, it’s a lot harder than that, otherwise we’d be positively swimming in electric guitar-based musical theatre. I Was A Teenage She-Devil is a valiant attempt at creating a straight-to-video style heavy metal horror show that falls a little bit short of the mark.
The setup is pretty standard. Set in an American High School, with the sports jocks and cheerleaders vs the nerds. On team sports, we have a handsome but dim jock, Big Rod, a permanently horny prankster, Todd, an American Christian called Tiffani and a nearly-psychotic cheerleader/popular girl, Heather. On team nerd, we have the shy but clever Nancy, her punk rock friend Debbie and the stoner geek, Doobie.
When Heather gets kicked off the cheerleading squad for being cruel to Nancy, she attempts to set up the nerdy girl to humiliate her at the prom. So far, so classic horror. It all goes wrong when Nancy sells her soul to the Devil for incredible powers (and a quick costume change into a spiky bra). We then head into horror farce, with a series of comic murders and some rather fun songs.
Sadly, the show lacks teeth, fanged or otherwise. It’s a show that needs a larger cast and bigger musical numbers. It feels like they’ve played it safe with every choice here; the scary bits are mild, the rock songs aren’t too loud, and the social commentary is on the safe side. There’s a touch of queer comedy here, but not much, and it’s easy to see it all coming. The performances are smashing, but the show just feels a little unfinished. It could be a classic, but the musical we saw isn’t quite there yet. Still, it has potential, and it’s certainly one for fans of Rocky Horror.
I Was A Teenage She-Devil is silly, spooky fun, and it clearly has an ambition to become some sort of camp horror mega-hit, but the show we saw just wasn’t quite as loud, edgy or scary to become the classic it aspires to.
You can book tickets for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe run here, and find more about future shows here.
