Joshua Lowden Cheromiah, Lando Ruiz, Raegan White, Daniel Garcia, and Hector Corona Photo by Emily Gelhar

Tina Fey, of "Saturday Night Live" fame, wrote the screenplay for the 2024 movie Mean Girls, about the cliques and bitches at the fictional North Shore High School in Illinois. If you're familiar with Chicagoland, you would know that North Shore refers to the upper class suburbs along Lake Michigan, just north of the city. These kids may have never known financial hardship, but that doesn't make getting through high school any easier. Who gets to sit at which lunch table can still be traumatic.

The movie was a hit, so following the modern Broadway business model, you take a known property with a built-in fan base and turn it into a musical. The Mean Girls musical opened on Broadway in 2018, with a book by Tina Fey, music by Jeff Richmond, and lyrics by Nell Benjamin. Then, in a back flip of sorts, the musical was turned into a movie in 2024. I guess you could call it a franchise.

The story is good, the music and lyrics are undistinguished, but nevertheless it makes for a highly entertaining time at the theater. There being only three "grown-ups" in the cast, we get to see 26 young talents at Albuquerque Little Theatre give it their all.

Everybody deserves a mention, but there are 29 in the cast. The lead role of Cady, a girl who gets thrown into an American high school after having been homeschooled by her biologist parents in Kenya, is played very well by Kyra Sprague. The meanest of the mean girls is Regina George, portrayed here by Raegan White. She gets the bitchiness and sense of privilege just right. Lissette Nichols is hilarious in her brief scenes as Regina's mother.

Abigail Strayhand and Joei Heredia do good work as Regina's hangers-on. Rachel Mixon and Jesie Rocetes are the narrators as well as characters in the plot, and they both are uninhibited performers, fun to watch. There are so many others, but I don't want to omit Ashleigh Turek as a compassionate teacher and Michael Harle who wonderfully plays four characters, each with a different accent.

The set is one of the stars of the show. Much credit to Casey Kearns for the scenic design, as well as to Lando Ruiz for the very inventive projections onto the set and for the sound design. Credit likewise for the fine lighting design by Emma Ziegler and the excellent costume design by Melanie Ebaugh and assistant costume designer Antonio Sandoval.

Jonathan Ragsdale has done a terrific job as both director and choreographer. Mary Brzezinski is the music director, and she coaxes good singing out of the entire cast. Kaleah Baca and assistant Kaya Wilson stage manage a very busy show. When you consider how much work it takes to put a show like this together, you appreciate how much talent we have in New Mexico, both on stage and behind the scenes.

Never having seen the original movie, I can't say whether turning it into a musical was an improvement or not. I can say, however, that it makes for a fun, high-energy show that has been creatively staged at the Albuquerque Little Theatre, and it's definitely worth seeing.

Mean Girls runs through September 13, 2026, at 224 San Pasquale Ave SW, Albuquerque NM. For tickets and information, please visit albuquerquelittletheatre.org.