Mean Girls the musical review Savoy Theatre, West End

Updated with references to social media and Ozempic, it mines a similar vein to Grease, Heathers, Clueless and a million other tales about outsiders negotiating the toxic cliques in American high schools.

Here it's served up with Fey's bracingly dark, sharp wit, visual gags, and some high-energy over-the-top numbers by Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin - as featured in the hit film musical earlier this year.

Charlie Burn as Cady, Elena Gyasi as Gretchen, Georgina Castle as Regina and Grace Mouat as Karen in Mean Girls (Image: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg)

Cady is the home schooled teen arriving wide-eyed from Africa to be taken in by the terrifying all-powerful 'plastics' at North Shore High.

The show is framed with a knowing wink by new best queer friends Damian and Janis as a 'cautionary tale' - ending with the tongue in cheek projected slogan 'Be A Nice Person'.

Tom Xander's wildly upstaging Damian, and Elena Skye's spiky Janis are a camp double act with Skye nailing Janis' bird-flipping Gen Z identity anthem, I'd Rather Be Me.

Naturally Cady goes Mean for a while before realising who her real friends are, but the learning moment about staying true to yourself is just a side hustle to the main act served up by Georgina Castle's outrageous snarling superbitch Regina George, who gets knocked off her pedestal courtesy of some cellulite and a deus ex machina school bus.

Daniel Bravo as Aaron and Charlie Burn as Cady (Image: Brinkhoff Moegenburg)

Along the way there are the lunch hall antics of Where Do You Belong? complete with semaphore plastic trays, mathletics geeks, jocks and all, and a disastrous house party where the teens do shots and throw up in the oven.

Background video projections whizz us between locations or illustrate moments like Regina's revenge song Someone Gets Hurt as she photocopies her infamous Burn Book.

Grace Mouat is delightfully ditzy as dim Karen, and Elena Gyasi's Gretchen shows how her neediness stems from lack of self worth.

Zoe Rainey has fun as Regina's wine-swilling Insta-gramming pink-tracksuited mom, and Charlie Burn's Cady is engagingly naive then rueful at her mistake.

While some quirky edges have been rubbed smooth and sanitised for the West End this will still hit the sweet spot for the target age group like my 12-year-old and their older handlers will enjoy the fun too.

Mean Girls runs at The Savoy Theatre West End until further notice.