Clueless musical. Way cool!

Anyone who can say ‘Cher has flecks of Elle from Legally Blonde’ in a review of the musical version of arguably the greatest movie of all time is genuinely clueless.

But that’s how one theatre critic describes the heroine of Amy Heckerling’s adorable re-working of her 1995 movie, Clueless. Legally Blonde was 2001 and is generally considered to be the sub-par stolen sequel of Clueless, which was a genius update on Jane Austen’s novel Emma… not that Amy Heckerling would ever be so basic as to do a sequel.

The musical, with quirky, catchy songs by K.T. Tunstall – starting with Perfect and trotting through Whatever, Human Barbies until you get to Clueless – riffs on the movie perfectly. And the crowd is so up for it, with even the costumes – mainly the ‘classic’ yellow plaid tennis skirt with shirt-tails and over-the-knee socks – getting an ovation of their own, while Emma Flynn’s take on the legendary Alicia Silverstone role is so pitch-perfect, that a couple of cocktails in and you’ll think it’s actually her.

You know the story: spoiled Valley Girl with a heart of gold sets about doing good works basically to get better grades (she thinks that if she can make her teachers fall in love with each other, their happiness will translate into A-pluses) and takes on a new girl, who she proceeds to transform from clueless stoner to the most popular girl in the school.

And there are real laugh-out-loud moments, such as when the nerdy lawyer interns transform themselves into acrobatic Backstreet Boys characters to sing Reasonable Doubts or when some of the movie’s best lines pop up such as when, during a fall-out, new girl Tai denounces Cher as ‘a virgin who can’t drive’ and you can almost feel the audience wanting to shout out, ‘Way harsh, Tai!’ from the movie.

So, while one critic slams Clueless for not being Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (thank god!), seems to miss the joke of gay Christian talking like a 1950s pastiche and denounces the script for not referencing anything ‘outside its 90s bubble’ (the same way Hamlet never talks about steam locomotives or Greggs?), the audience found the whole experience joyful, genuinely funny and perfect in its updating of an amazing film into an incredible night out.

Trafalgar Studios, London.