It’s 2025, which means classic ‘90s movie Clueless is now 30 years old (ugh, as if). If you’re a fan of the film – and/or a musical theatre aficionado – you may have clocked that a new stage adaptation, Clueless, The Musical, is about to open on London’s West End at the Trafalgar Theatre.
We’ve already had a bit of a preview: singer/songwriter KT Tunstall, who has written the music for the show, treated us to a few songs at a private gig at London’s Ham Yard Hotel in the autumn. More recently we caught up with KT for a chat about the musical, the journey so far and what we can expect from the show…
So, about Clueless, The Musical – I was at the Ham Yard Hotel a few months ago…
“Oh were you? It was really mental because the producers were like ‘would you be able to play, like, four songs from the musical?’ – look, I wrote them but I haven’t worked out how to play and sing them on a guitar on my own! Clueless, the title song, I had played a few times, but the other songs I hadn’t played at all, and so I had about two days to work out how to play them solo. It was a mad dash but it was really great fun, such a great crowd.”
You’re right, we WERE a great crowd. Also, you threw your plectrum into the crowd at the end and I caught it!
“Oh did you? You win! It’s gonna be your year!”
Sorry, I’ll ask you some actual questions. We all know you as a pop singer/songwriter – how did you end up writing the songs for a musical?
“So the synopsis is – I was never a massive stage musical fan growing up, I always found them a bit too much, just not very believable… and then I went to see The Book of Mormon and I was just completely converted, it’s so outrageous, if you can get away with doing this then I’m in! This is so fun! It just felt like a bit of a turning point in musical theatre, we’ve got this situation now where you can watch a musical about anything, it can be a really difficult subject, it can be any sort of story. It’s really widened its spectrum of what musical theatre can offer.
“I wanted to try something new, so I kinda put it out into the universe that I was interested in writing musicals. I was asked to come aboard another musical and when I signed on to that, I was working with Glenn Slater who was the lyricist… Glenn was really my mentor, taught me most of what I know about writing for musicals.
“And then Glenn actually stepped off that, he’s no longer working on that show, but a couple of years later he called up saying – would I be interested in doing the music for Clueless? And it was just an immediate ‘yes’! It’s such an iconic piece of work and it’s so exciting that Amy Heckerling is on the creative team, keeping it as authentic as possible.”
Very excited to see it when it opens in February. Can you tell me a bit about the journey of the show so far?
“We’ve had two workshops. The first was really just throwing some stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck! It was completely haphazard and mad! And then the second workshop we had was extremely helpful and went really well. Me and Glenn were just going ‘oh my God we’ve not finished, it’s not right’ and we sat in the Churchill Theatre every night and people were loving it!
“We knew that it could still be improved upon. But the wonderful thing about that workshop was that we found our leads, Emma Flynn and Keelan McAuley and they are absolutely stellar! I mean, Emma is just – she’s called Emma! And it’s based on Emma by Jane Austen, it couldn’t be more perfect!”
Tell me about the songs and the musical style of the show…
“One of the fun things about this musical is that we want to keep it true to the 1990s, this is not Clueless today, this is Clueless in 1995. I had this idea of – let’s pay homage to specific 1990s hits, so what I wanted was the soundtrack of this musical to be the C90 cassette tape that’s playing in Cher’s Jeep. I’m adamant that it’s going to be on the merch table that you can buy a cassette tape of the songs!
“Every single song is like a descendant of a massive ‘90s hit. So there’s a song that Josh – the Paul Rudd character – sings that is an homage to Basket Case by Green Day, and we’ve got another song sung by Elton which is Right Said Fred – I’m Too Sexy! You’re going to be going ‘oh my God that sounds just like this’ and before you can work out what it is you’re in a new song with a new chorus and singing that instead. Even if you’re not a massive musical theatre fan, if you came to see this show, there would be a song in there that you love, because we’ve covered it all.
“For me it’s a really great exercise to go back to those hits of the ‘90s and get deep into the production of those songs, and reverse engineer how those songs were made, what the sounds are. Sometimes you’ve got horn sections, but like… really bad ‘90s samples, whereas now you would want to use the best samples available. Sometimes it’s better to go back and use those crappy ‘90s keyboard sounds – I mean crappy now, they were brand new then – because that’s the sound of that time.”
What about the show will appeal to our readers?
“First of all it’s extremely funny! We have really leant into it being a comedy, and while it’s a real emotion journey, it’s about this girl who grew up without a mother and is desperately trying to control the world around her by telling everybody what she thinks they should do, and if they don’t do what she wants them to do then it’s wrong. It’s a really delicate pivot with that character: she’s rich, life is good, but her intent in her life is just to make other people happy. And in the end it comes and bites her on her arse that she has to do that for herself as well, she can’t just be worrying about other people.
“But something specific is this song where Cher is trying to seduce Christian, and of course he’s gay. There is a rhyming couplet where… I’m not going to give it away completely, but Christian has brought some videotapes over for them to watch and it’s Spartacus and Top Gun! And Cher’s like ‘oh… okay!’ It’s called Tonight’s the Night and it’s an amazing physical comedy song of Cher trying her best to turn a young gay man and uh… doesn’t manage!”
One last question, and this one’s not about the show – I wanted to ask you about your music. 2025 is not only the 30th anniversary of Clueless but it’s also the 20th anniversary of your debut album Eye to the Telescope and I understand it’s also the 50th anniversary of…
“…of ME! It’s a really amazing alignment of anniversaries, it’s weird that it’s all happening at the same time. I had this vision board a couple of years ago… I always love to have a birthday celebration, I loved having my 40th and I was like ‘oh I have to do something really cool for my 50th’ and I just thought, you know, I’ve never actually headlined the Royal Albert Hall. I’ve played it as a guest of other people and it’s just such a magical venue.
“When I was in London for 13 years, for my birthday, I would play in this pub in Harlesden called The Paradise and we would have a party and all my friends, as a present, would make bands and play amazing covers of great ‘80s tunes, or whatever, guilty pleasures. I thought, ‘I wanna just have that party, but in the Royal Albert Hall!’ So we’re gonna play the album, and then… we were gonna announce the second half of the show and then all the tickets sold out!
“So we haven’t even told people what’s gonna happen but it’s gonna be so fun. I think there’s a few tickets left, because we just opened up the choir seats… I promise you that’s going to be an outrageous party!”
More information about Clueless, The Musical can be found here.
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