Clueless

A quintessential ’90s high school comedy that launched the brief Hollywood career of Alicia Silverstone, Amy Heckerling’s 1995 ‘Clueless’ is a smart rewrite of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ that centres on Cher Lloyd, a priviliged but kind-hearted student at a Californian high school whose efforts to help her peers in life and love leave her somewhat neglected. In its way a forerunner of ‘Mean Girls’, it makes the leap to West End musical a year after Tina Fey’s adaptation of her own film opened here, with Heckerling writing the book and big-in-the-’00s Scottish songwriter KT Tunstall doing the music, with direction from Rachel Kavanaugh. Opening at the relatively intimate Trafalgar Theatre, it’s clearly positioning itself on the more indie side of the West End spectrum, but if it can match the culty charm of Heckerling’s original film then it could have some real legs. Casting is currently TBC, though the fact most of the characters are schoolkids means big names are unlikely.