As someone living in New York, I try to avoid the big crowds of Holiday season in the city. That’s why I postpone outings until the new year as most events will be Christmas related in December anyways.

As January comes, I try to catch up with theater. For the reader information, there’s an excellent array of great new plays. I am talking about “The Slave Play” or “The Soldier’s Play,” for instance. Not mentioning long running plays such as “Come From Away,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” or even “Hamilton” (feeling optimistic).

Recently, a friend of mine started playing the Broadway lottery. I believe it is a fun game as you look forward to learning what shows you might be lucky enough to win. She was recently awarded an opportunity to purchase 2 tickets to Mean Girls on Broadway for a discounted price. As someone who had watched the 2004 homonymous movie, I accepted the invitation to accompany her, on a Wednesday evening (not wearing pink though).

First, I have a confession to make: I am a fan of Tina Fey! I read her biography (Bossy Pants), I watched every single episode of 30 Rock that has ever been aired, twice, and I loved her playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. I have to confess, though, that I wasn’t anticipating the crowds of teenagers in attendance to the show. It was, however, predictable, as the play tells the story of Cady Heron, a homeschooled 16-year old girl living in Africa, who discovers her family has to move back to the USA, so she will have to attend a public high school in Chicago.

As a lot of you know, her first year in a real school didn’t exactly live up to her expectations. Quickly, Cady learned how socializing in high school can be daunting. She first befriended Janis Ian and Damian, who showed her the different “groups” of students in the Northshore Highschool. From the math “geeks’ to the “misfits”, Cady is warned by Janis and Damian not to mingle with “The Plastics”, which are Karen Smith, Gretchen Wieners, and Regina George. They are the bullies with whom Janis had already shenanigans during middle school and, as we found out, she wants to use Cady to a personal vendetta against Regina, the leader of the trio. The three girls created a “Burn Book” where they post their own perspective of each and every person in the school, including the Calculus teacher.

If the movie included a number of future A-list cast such as Lindsay Lohan (Cady), Rachel McAdams (Regina), and Amanda Seyfried (Karen), the show on Broadway introduced the plot in the form of music. Unlike other adaptations to Broadway, Fey took an active role in rewriting it for the Broadway version. Also, her husband, Jeff Richmond, is the head behind the music, which includes “Apex Predator,” performed by Barrett Wilbert Weed (Janis) and Erika Henningsen (Cady), and Lorne Michaels, the head behind SNL, is the show’s producer.

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A lot of the aspects of the original plot are intact, some of which made this movie memorable. Think the infamous lines “On Wednesdays we wear pink,” “It’s October 3rd,” or “Stopping trying to make fetch a thing.” Even the classic winter talent show scene with “the Plastics” performing “Jingle Bell Rock” is included. However, America came a long way from 2004 fast forwarding to 2019/20, and the show would not be the same if it failed to address cyberbullying and social media, which weren’t around back in the early 2000s.

In summary, Mean Girls on Broadway is a great way to kick off the theater low season in New York as it is very unpretentious and entertaining.