It is sharply excruciating to watch a group of talented people try to make a bad musical work. The singing sounds a strain, the dancing looks lackluster, the joins in the plot fray visibly in front of you—everything seems off, yet still the company perseveres as it must towards cresting the finish-line tape.
It’s a relatable feeling too, watching this unhappy cauldron of effort hubble and bubble, for who has not tried to make something work when it stubbornly refuses to do so? We see such situations valiantly confronted in dough form on The Great British Bake Off. Sometimes the universe looks at us and says, “Here’s the square peg, and here’s the round hole—enjoy figuring that one out!”
And so it is with Romy & Michele: The Musical (Stage 42, booking to Mar. 1, 2026), the depressingly subpar musical version of the cult 1997 movie that starred Mira Sorvino as Romy and Lisa Kudrow as Michele.
That the film has retained a place in the popular imagination—and a dedicated fanbase—explains its IP extension into a musical, directed by Kristin Hanggi. Its book is by Robin Schiff, screenwriter of the original movie, which it matches narrative beat for narrative beat. Another source is Schiff’s 1988 play Ladies Room, in which Romy and Michele first appeared as characters. (She and Kudrow were both members of famed L.A. improv and sketch comedy troupe, the Groundlings.)
“Some friendships are the perfect fit” is the show’s tagline, yet the musical—unlike the film—never makes a case of a great friendship between Romy (Laura Bell Bundy) and Michele (Kara Lindsay). Everything that had charm in the film has a frozen anti-appeal in the musical. Here, the women’s friendship seems wooden, infantile, unconvincing, and bizarre. Indeed, the show itself feels ridiculous, and not in an appealing way.
The story for newbies: When we first meet Romy and Michele they are in their mid-twenties, living pretty empty un- and under-employed lives in Los Angeles. Things have not worked out as they hoped. A high school reunion in 1997 is the spur for the women to revisit their miserable high school pasts a decade previously.
The idea of returning to Arizona, and facing their tormentors—principally, Christie (Lauren Zakrin), leader of the “A-group”—is too much to bear, so they make up a story of wild over-accomplishment. Then they fall out over who is responsible for this fabricated success (the invention of the Post-it), before fessing up, reconciling, confronting their tormentors, then opening a boutique in Los Angeles selling the most hideous clothes Planet Fashion has ever dreamt up.
You don’t buy any of it on stage—the women’s friendship (the leads lack a chemistry they desperately need), the aping of the characters’ goofy mannerisms, the bullying Romy and Michele allegedly endured (they’re conventionally pretty and hardly outcasts), or the B-plots of the men they may desire. Nobody looks whatever their age is supposed to be. The songs are mostly mechanical and forgettable. The show plods from one stereotype or trope you’ve seen in high school-set movies ever since Grease did it first and best.
The goth (Heather, played by Jordan Kai Burnett), the nerd who’s really a stunner (Sandy, played by Michael Thomas Grant), the sweet, closeted gay (Je’Shaun Jackson), and the preening muscle jock (Billy, played by Pascal Pastrana): all are here, and some of their numbers, and voices, outshine the leads.
Of course, if you’re a devoted fan you may experience Romy & Michele: The Musical differently. By hewing so close to the movie, the pleasure in the intended nostalgic echoes—there is even very literal ’80s/’90s nostalgia beamed on to background screens—may make for a pleasurable evening. But at the performance I attended the applause after nearly every number (with one or two enthusiastically-received exceptions) was politely tepid at best.
That perhaps is instructive for producers wanting to make money out of a product like Romy & Michele. You can’t just stick a much-loved story, or characters, on stage and expect people to part with their dollars to gaze adoringly upon them.
Instead, figure out the distillation or transformation of the original source of magic or charm onto the stage, then hit those marks with precision nerve-tweaking, or render a totally new product in a fresh and engaging way for as wide an audience as possible (or execute an artful combination of both). There is none of that with this show—just a grinding sense of strenuous effort to a futile end.
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