Our Love Is God ❤️💛💚💙 Heathers the Musical
Plus an interview with MJP Cuervo, Founder of HELLEBORE occult magazine
This time in IF YOU GO AWAY I’ve kept a tighter focus than usual. I’m going to: evangelise the genius of Heathers The Musical, my new favourite dark teen romance; share my new article about the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic for Cornwall Live; and interview Maria J Pérez Cuervo, founder of HELLEBORE magazine.
HELLEBORE is a critically-acclaimed and widely celebrated magazine of British folk horror and the occult. It’s pretty much the gold standard for quality when it comes to writing about the occult and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you’re already an avid fan, read on for tips on how to have your work published in HELLEBORE and advice on the greatest challenges if you’re looking to create something like it.
An introduction to Heathers
Heathers, starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, is a black teen comedy released in 1989 that features an American high school rife with savage bullying and merciless cliques whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of a misanthropic loner intent on changing the world by murdering the popular kids and framing their deaths as suicides.
There’s something deliciously subversive about the way that the film tackles a coming-of-age story with a level of Lynchian honesty, holding a dark mirror to the idealised John Hughes teen movies of the era.
As great as Heathers is, however, I always felt that it was a film that didn’t live up to its full potential. Tonally, Heathers wants to have its cake and eat it, satirising teen bullying and miscreancy while alternating between moments of sincerity and campness that verges on the surreal.
Veronica Sawyer and JD’s romance is idealised when it suits the narrative, which is easily done with leads like Ryder and Slater, then becomes two-dimensional and discardable when the story requires a shift to affirm that murdering popular teenagers is wrong.
Ultimately, I think that my issue with Heathers is its embrace of the cynicism and irony that came to define so much Gen X humour and particularly pop culture entertainment. In a world where young people were constantly told to wait their turn, get in line and stop bellyaching, maintaining a coolly cultivated air of distance was a coping mechanism – sure, I asked you if you were free to go out on Friday night, but not on a date date… how uncool would that be?
Acting like nothing mattered shielded Gen X from the consequences of living in an uncaring world that was as likely to laugh at your pain as it was to tell you to not make such a big deal out of it. When that kind of ironic detachment bled into mass entertainment, however, sincerity went down the toilet. I find it difficult to invest in the stakes of a story where the main characters are more enamoured with their own coolness than the guilt of murdering their peers.
In praise of Heathers The Musical
Enter Heathers The Musical, written by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe and originally directed by Andy Fickman, based on the film written by Daniel Waters. Heathers The Musical reimagines the story of Heathers, set in 1989, bringing to life most of the same characters and settings of the film in a three-dimensional and fully realised way, billed as “a hilarious, heartfelt, and homicidal new show”.
Heathers The Musical premiered in Los Angeles in the US before moving off-Broadway in 2014, starting in the UK in 2018. I first watched it at Theatre Royal Plymouth in April 2023, and again earlier this month at the Princess Theatre, Torquay, with the exceptional Jenna Innes playing Veronica Sawyer in both performances. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Heathers The Musical now occupies a permanent place in my heart, resonating with me in a way that few stories manage.
In my lifetime I’ve immersed myself in a lot of fictional worlds, reading a lot of novels and comic-books, watching a lot of films and television series, and in recent years I’ve attended the theatre regularly. I enjoy a lot of stories, enthusiastically, and like to think that I can appreciate well-crafted art even if it doesn’t match my taste, but stories that stay with me and truly resonate are fewer than I would like.
You won’t need to look closely to see the threads that join some of my absolute favourites. Battle Royale, from the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami to the 2000 film and the manga that was serialised in Japan from 2000 to 2005 and in English from 2003 to 2006. Packed with unrequited romance, dog-eat-dog violence, and what Jack Off Jill described as “humid teenage mediocrity”. Higurashi: When They Cry, primarily the 2005 to 2011 manga series but also the anime, games and multiple sequels. An inversion of the harem manga setup, with a teenage boy surrounded by beautiful girls in high school, any one of whom is as likely to be overcome by infatuation as they are paranoid urges to chop him into pieces. And Ginger Snaps, the 2000 Canadian teen horror directed by John Fawcett and written by Karen Walton. Coming-of-age for a pair of morbid teens when that time of the month comes with teeth and dismemberment. Click below to read my interview with Karen:
The end of HERETICS... for now!
Each in their own way deals with the anguish and emotional turmoil of adolescence, a time in our lives when emotions are dialled up to 11 and the smallest of events and interactions can take on disproportionate significance. This, to me, is why Romeo and Juliet stands out among Shakespeare’s plays as the one that people will recognise even when they couldn’t name anything else that he’s written. For many of us our teenage years were an opportunity to indulge in and explore our emotions with a level of intensity and introspection that we’ll never again match in our adult lives.
I keep returning to the article that Katherine Dee wrote about online fandom for teen high school shooters, and her quote that “When we’re teenagers, our feelings are so big and the reality of our lives are often so small in comparison. The violence of a school shooting gives teen angst the gravitas it feels like it deserves: it offers catharsis.”
Heathers The Musical takes that angle of bringing to life the horrors of school bullying for teenagers and embracing the emotional truth for the more sentimental of us who felt like outcasts, then running with it to its natural conclusion. Writer Kevin Murphy said that the key to adapting Heathers was “we had to find ways to like everybody. Even though pretty much every character in the story is cruel, selfish, angry, and/or deluded.”
Interviewed by Playbill, the writing team said: “One of the tricks we learned to use in the show is using positive language to convey ugly ideas and depict cruel behaviour. We tried our best to have our characters express positivity even when they’re doing terrible things.”
That, for me, is the key to the success of Heathers The Musical. Packed with bombastic songs that I’ll be singing for the rest of my life, when Veronica Sawyer and JD fall for each other, the sincerity of their emotions carries all of the carnage and loss of life that follows. Every time I watch it, I long for them to make different decisions, to choose life over death and to allow themselves time and space to enjoy being 17 years old.
“You’re planning your future, Veronica Sawyer. You’ll go to some college, then marry a lawyer. But the sky’s gonna hurt when it falls, so you’d better start building some walls…”
– JD, ‘Freeze Your Brain’.
How often can you describe as heart-warming a story filled with bullying, homophobia, murder, suicide attempts, and the physical projection of trauma? When Veronica latches on to JD and allows herself to idealise this teen miscreant as an alternative to her shallow life of popularity, she awakens a dormant monster, and everything that happens comes as the direct result of the sincerity of their love for one another.
Filmed in London’s The Other Palace and released in 2022, you can watch a recording of Heathers The Musical if you have no options to watch it live. There are also two audio cast recordings available, originally recorded in 2014 featuring the inferior date-rape song Blue, which has since been retired, and a West End cast recording from 2019 featuring the much better replacement song, You’re Welcome, giving Veronica much more autonomy and putting her more firmly at the centre of her own story.
If you fall in love with Heathers The Musical and want to study it further, you can buy the script online at Concord Theatricals. There was even a Riverdale episode adapting the high school version of the musical, which I could live without ever watching again. (Rarely have I seen such a talented cast wasted on plotlines as nonsensical as the farce that Riverdale descended into after the first season, so my expectations weren’t high, but having one of the raunchiest teen shows of all time using the lyrics from the heavily sanitised and censored teen script of Heathers the Musical felt like a staggeringly redundant creative decision.)
If you can’t see Heathers live, I recommend both the filmed version starring Ailsa Davidson and Simon Gordon, and the 2019 cast recording starring Carrie Hope Fletcher and Jamie Muscato, which have more nuance and character to their performances than the Off-Broadway cast. But of the eight versions I’ve heard or watched to date, my favourite cast combination was the team-up of Jenna Innes as Veronica and Keelan McAuley as JD.
Innes owns the role of Veronica for me, giving a much more memorable and iconic performance even than Winona Ryder when she first defined the character. Keelan McAuley takes the character of JD about as far from Christian Slater’s hollow detachment as its possible to get, imbuing his words and songs with a depth of emotion and turbulence that really brings his actions to life.
If all of that wasn’t enough, you can also see a bad recording of the original Off-Broadway version on YouTube. Watching it hints at the way that each iteration and new song has improved on the formula. The older performances stay closer to the movie, better capturing the inappropriate wit of the relationship between JD and his father, but the later revisions serve to better give the musical its own identity, strengthening JD’s motivations, clarifying Veronica’s character arc and giving her an autonomy that was previously hazy.
I’m biased, but it felt to me like the musical only really reached its full potential in England, with an improved wardrobe, stage design, some top tier performances, and the optimum versions of the songs. The idea that tracks like You’re Welcome, Never Shut Up Again, and I Say No, weren’t introduced until 2018 seems crazy.
Heathers The Musical is coming to New York in 2025, so if you’re on that side of the water, don’t miss the opportunity. The version that returns to the US has been vastly improved since it left.
Behind the scenes at the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic
Once a year, Boscastle’s Museum of Witchcraft & Magic (MWM) closes its doors to members of the public and opens for a private Patron’s Day. As well as giving a home to the macabre and other-worldly, the MWM is also a mecca for alternative and dark artists. Read more on Cornwall Live.
Interview with Maria J Pérez Cuervo
I launched my Substack newsletter, IF YOU GO AWAY, in October 2019, trusting that including an interview with the talented Maria J Pérez Cuervo would be a strong enough opening to persuade readers to give me a chance and check back for future updates. At the time, Maria was launching the first issue of HELLEBORE, an independent magazine devoted to British folk horror and the occult.
A freelance writer and editor who specialises in history, archaeology, myth, and mystery, Maria has written for other magazines, including Fortean Times, and had previously worked in television (including on Time Team and Tony Robinson’s Unexplained), but at the time of launching HELLEBORE there was really nothing to indicate the level of success that she would reach, other than the obvious quality and love that went into putting the first issue together.
Since then HELLEBORE has gone from strength to strength, picking up celebrity fans around the world (as you’ll read below) and leading to Maria becoming the go-to voice when big name institutions like the BBC and The Times need a quote to elaborate on articles about witchy and folk-horror adjacent subjects.
Seeing the spectacular success that her endeavours have met since we first spoke, I wanted to interview Maria again to find out more about the challenges that she faced, the rewards of her hard work, and to get an insight into what it now takes to have your work published in HELLEBORE.
1/ Can you tell me a little about HELLEBORE, five years after I last asked you the same question? What is HELLEBORE and has the idea changed in that time?
HELLEBORE was born in 2019 as a magazine devoted to folk horror and the occult in Britain. Five years later, I find myself running a small press which has also published a travel guide (The Hellebore Guide to Occult Britain), a card game (The Magical Battle of Britain) and a side magazine called Yuletide Hauntings.
There’s still a focus on folk horror and the occult, but it would be more accurate to say that HELLEBORE deals with other things too: folklore, paganism, magic, the occult, and the supernatural in history and modern culture.
2/ What has been your proudest moment in relation to HELLEBORE?
There have been a few which I still cannot quite believe: being a finalist for the World Fantasy Awards and the British Fantasy Awards, being praised by Grady Hendrix, Elizabeth Hand, Alan Moore, Elijah Wood and Guillermo del Toro.
But my proudest moment was being endorsed by Ronald Hutton, the leading expert in modern paganism and the ritual year in Britain, someone who for me represents the gold standard of scholarship in Humanities. He called HELLEBORE “the most erudite journal on the current scene to deal with Paganism, magic and folklore in the realms of modern history, fiction and popular culture”. Kind words coming from someone whose work you respect so much are always the most meaningful.
3/ Have you met any collaborators or contributors, or commissioned any articles, that have stayed with you or that you'd particularly recommend?
I am very lucky to work with so many incredible contributors who clearly have a love for Art and Humanities and with whom I share many values. Some recent examples of articles that have stayed with me are John Callow’s piece on Robin Hood, “The Great English Rebel”, Nick Freeman’s “Tales of Tam Lin”, Kristof Smeyer’s “The Last English Raven”, as well as the transcendent photography of Lorenza Daprà, Clare Marie Bailey and Courtney Brooke (Light Witch).
4/ What would you recommend to anybody who dreams of having their work featured in HELLEBORE?
For every issue, I invite some researchers or academics who I know are working on a particular subject, and I also write a call for submissions to allow people whose work I might not be familiar with to reach out. Some of the pitches I receive aren’t successful simply because they don’t fit in with my vision for the issue or with HELLEBORE as a whole, or because they repeat stories we’ve already published.
Aside from that, successful pitches always adhere to the submission guidelines: they have the right length (I’ve been sent full articles before, even though I only ask for a brief summary), they include sources, and they fit in with the theme.
5/ What have been the greatest challenges in terms of creating HELLEBORE?
I think the most difficult part for all indie creatives right now is having to do it all: not just the creative part, but also the marketing, the social media, the PR, the events, the customer service. We need to be careful with burnout and find time to fill up our well. For example, I shouldn’t really check my phone outside working hours, but I do it all the time.
7/ Can you remember the moment when you first took an interest in the occult or horror?
When I was at preschool in Spain, we were able to buy a type of hard candy called Dracula, which had a fun gimmick: it made your tongue red. The wrapper was white, with Dracula written in red gothic letters, and a black and white illustration of a vampire under it. That might have started it all. At some point I told my dad about them, and when he mentioned the old Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing movies something clicked. I became a fan of Hammer horror on the spot, before I had actually seen any.
At around the same time, or maybe a little later, there was a weekly Hitchcock season on Spanish TV, so my mum would put me to bed early to be able to watch whatever movie they were showing. The following morning she would tell me about killer birds, policemen who develop a phobia of heights, or traumatised women who become compulsive thieves. I was morbidly fascinated. The rest probably comes from my Catholic education and its emphasis on the metaphysical, mixed in with some folk legends my grandma told me about, such as the three knocks of Death or the Holy Company.
8/ Where do you go to find inspiration?
I read and watch films whenever I can. I love disappearing down rabbit holes. Right now, I’m reading about Roman and Greek magic and dreams and the Underworld. The best place to start is your imagination.
The best articles I’ve read on Substack recently:
If you didn’t enjoy me waxing lyrical about the beauty of Heathers The Musical, rest assured that I’ll continue listening to the recordings on repeat but I’ve probably exhausted the subject in terms of IF YOU GO AWAY.
Anybody with a superficial understanding of my writing can probably tell you that the things I love are dark and transgressive, but if you pay attention you’ll also discover that romance is what motivates me the most. In that context, any fool could predict that I’d fall in love with a musical about a doomed romance between a troubled teen and an aspiring high school shooter.
Thanks for the link!