A dark parody of 80s high-school movies, cult classic Heathers is an odd choice for musical adaptation.

The 1989 film starred Winona Ryder and Christian Slater as misfit teens who murder some of their bullying tormentors. It’s got guns, rape and attempted suicides.

Together with director Andy Fickman, Kevin Murphy and Legally Blonde the Musical’s Laurence O’Keefe have created a slightly sanitised version with mostly forgettable songs.

Nevertheless, Heathers the Musical has found an enthusiastic audience. Since its 2014 Off-Broadway debut, this show has toured the UK multiple times, including the West End, is currently enjoying an Off-Broadway revival, and is now in Australia for a second professional outing following the 2015-16 debut tour.

Heathers the Musical. Photo © Cameron Grant, Perenthesy

Conjuring an extremely American high-school milieu, the local, mostly young cast is impressively led by Emma Caporaso in her professional theatre debut.

She plays Veronica, an ordinary girl who unexpectedly becomes a fringe member of Westerberg High’s powerful, nasty social clique, the Heathers, so called because the trio are all named Heather.

Veronica simultaneously falls for new kid JD, a misanthrope who fuels her angst and rebelliousness. He makes her an accomplice in the staged suicides of queen bee Heather Chandler and jocks Ram and Kurt.

These victims become amusing ghosts, who help lighten the mood amid grief, actual attempted suicides and moral disengagement. Heathers the Musical is a constant balancing act between light and dark. Mostly it succeeds, especially with funny if often cutting one-liners, but the jocks’ predatory behaviour, especially verbal sexual harassment, reaches disturbing levels.

Emma Caporaso and Conor Beaumont: Heathers the Musical. Photo © Cameron Grant, Perenthesy

Caporaso is likeably persuasive as Veronica, deftly riding a rollercoaster that includes reluctant mean girl, the thrill of popularity, young love, a muddled sense of self and awakening maturity. Her strong, warm, agile voice shines brightest in wistful ballad Seventeen – the show’s most memorable song – and defiant I Say No.

Conor Beaumont has an air of quiet subversion as JD, and also offers glimpses of a troubled soul when declaring obsessive love for Veronica and during difficult interactions with his father. JD’s big numbers, Freeze Your Brain and Our Love is God, are nicely executed.

Calista Nelmes is suitably poised and acidic as Heather Chandler, then exudes exasperated sarcasm in ghost form. There’s calculated fierceness about Amélia Rojas’s Heather Duke, especially when she seizes the opportunity to become queen bee, while Abigail Sharp reveals the underlying sweetness and vulnerability of Heather McNamara.

Abigail Sharp: Heathers the Musical. Photo © Cameron Grant, Perenthesy

Mel O’Brien neatly conveys tragedy and comedy as the old friend Veronica rejects, Martha Dunnstock; her moment of wordless humour near show’s end is a hoot. David Cuny and Nic Van Lits make a funny Ram-and-Kurt double act, with synchronised visual gags and knucklehead attitudes, but they can also be sexually threatening.

Among the older cast members, Zoe Gertz shows off her comic chops and some big notes in misguided teacher Ms Fleming’s solo, Shine a Light. Ellis Dolan shows his versatility in three roles, including JD’s dodgy dad. The ensemble rarely catches our attention, in part because Gary Lloyd’s choreography is minimal, with flashes of retro music-video moves.

Rather than succumbing to 1980s clichés, David Shields’s design hovers in a late 20th, early 21st century neverland in which various teen types are immediately recognised by their clothes.

Most prominent are the Heathers’s sharply tailored little jackets and skirts, which allude to the original film and its 1995 successor, Clueless, but with a more striking uniformity of style in monochrome red, green or yellow tartan or tweed.

Shields’s two-level set of high-school building bricks with some windows, railings and signs is simple but effective, and versatile enough to evoke other spaces with the quick introduction of elements such as a bed or Slurpee machine.

Heathers the Musical is two hours (plus interval) of fairly solid entertainment. You’ll probably laugh several times, enjoy a few songs, feel slightly uncomfortable once or twice, then soon forget about it. Or perhaps you’ll love this quasi-retro bit of teen angst, transformation and rebellion featuring three snappily dressed mean girls.

Heathers the Musical is at the Playhouse, Melbourne, until 9 May, then tours to Adelaide (16-26 July), Gold Coast (30 July-9 August), Canberra (14-23 August), Sydney (26 August-19 September) and Perth (30 September-19 October).