Photo by Valerie Terranova.
Romy & Michele: The Musical
Presented by Stage 42
Book by Robin Schiff
Music and lyrics by Gwendolyn Sanford & Brandon Jay
Directed by Kristin Hanggi
Choreographed by Karla Puno Garcia
Music supervision by Keith Harrison Dworkin
TICKETS
New York, NY
Review by Kitty Drexel
NEW YORK — Last week, I attended the American Theatre Critics Association’s yearly conference in New York. It was lit! (R.I.P. “lit,” T.O.D.: 10:26 AM, 11/13/25) Press tickets were made available to attendees in exchange for coverage. I attended Romy & Michele: The Musical at Stage 42 on November 6 as part of the conference.
I streamed the movie after securing tickets. Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion is fun. Not good, not bad. Fun. I’d watch the movie again if it happened to be on. I feel the same about the musical. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it if a local theatre was producing it, and I didn’t know anyone in the cast. I would totally attend as press to see what a different cast did with it. Because it’s fun. Some revolutions are built on fun.
Based on the 1997 cult classic screenplay by Robin Schiff, Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion, Romy & Michele: The Musical is now playing off-Broadway at Stage 42 in New York. Romy (Laura Bell Bundy, who nails the accent and even brings the accent to her sick vocals) and Michele (Kara Lindsay, who gives Lisa Kudrow a run for her money and belts with equally as sick vocals) left their 80s Arizona high school for L.A. after graduation and never looked back. Except now, they are looking back.
A phone call with high school yearbook editor and reunion organizer Toby (Je’Shaun Jackson, who brought the house down with their tender, soulful solos) informs Romy & Michele of the upcoming 10-year reunion. As in the movie, Romy & Michele use the reunion to reinvent themselves, their careers, and their love lives for the 90s. They reconnect with old classmates, badass Heather (Jordan Kai Burnett) and meat-sweaty Sandy (Michael Thomas Grant), and show their old nemeses, the A-Group (Lauren Zakrin, Erica Dorfler, Ninako Donville, Pascal Pastrana, DeMarius R Copes), how much cooler they are now. No matter what happens, best friends Romy & Michele are dressed to the nines.
Romy & Michele: The Musical pays homage to its movie origins in the tradition of other movie musicals such as Legally Blonde and Beetlejuice. It features original music by Gwendolyn Sanford & Brandon Jay but only borrows from the movie soundtrack in key moments. It is not a jukebox musical. Like its leading ladies, the musical is its own thing.
This musical was still in its editing phases on the evening we attended. The playbill included an insert with a streamlined list of musical numbers. The first and second acts had great pacing and deviated from the movie slightly. Some of the romantic relationships from the movie didn’t make it into the musical, but some of the original characters are given new life. Heather is a badass chick who gets the gold and her man while dancing the tango. There’s a DJ who gets a hip-hop dance solo. But rest assured, Robin Schiff’s book includes its most quotable dialogue and one-liners about Post-its and businesswomen’s specials.
It doesn’t have the bank-breaking budget of Queen of Versailles (a musical with nonfictional characters so insipid, they make Romy and Michele look like Mensa candidates), but it manages to do more with less: its costumes are kitschy, its wigs are floofy and fabulous, and its set pieces transport us where we need to go. Its relatively small budget and vast costume requirements are perfect for high school and community theatre productions. Organizations can pack the ensemble with as many or as few fancily-dressed actors as they’d like, and everyone gets to dance and sing along to the pit ensemble.
To be frank, Romy & Michele is a silly musical about fashion and becoming a cool kid. Low stakes. It’s not trying to recreate the genre or break intellectual boundaries. I posit that there’s great value in entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Sometimes a musical can just be fun; It doesn’t need ulterior motives to exist (QoV attempts to exonerate its subjects from their villainous behavior and fails). Romy & Michele wants us to have a good time. It’s more fun than the musical up the street at a fraction of the price. If the world is ending in a dumpster fire of political infighting and ecological and human rights violations, we might as well get our joy where we can.
