High school satires don’t run much darker or more delicious than the 1988 film Heathers, which complicated its Mean Girls social dynamics with murder and suicide. As the heroine, Veronica Sawyer, mordantly observes: “My teenage angst bullshit has a body count.”

Now at New World Stages, composer-lyricists Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe have adapted Daniel Waters’ screenplay into a new musical, amplifying its cheerful vulgarity while softening its social critique, replacing black comedy with candy-colored camp.

The plot concerns 17-year-old Sawyer (Barrett Wilbert Weed), a brainy girl who has developed a tenuous friendship with three popular girls all named Heather, a set of Stepford teens in matching rah-rah skirts and knee socks. But after Veronica commits a faux pas at a kegger, “mythic bitch” Heather Chandler (Jessica Keenan Wynn) threatens her with social exile. When Veronica goes to apologize, her new boyfriend JD (Ryan McCartan) urges her toward murder instead, then makes the death seem a suicide. Further slaughter follows.

Wynn is superb as “the demon queen of high school”— death only makes her nastier. Weed has her moments, too, though she doesn’t entirely articulate a coherent character. Sadly, McCartan’s “psycho trenchcoat kid” seems like the Disney version of a juvenile delinquent, and the rest of the cast don’t really distinguish themselves, despite some remarkable 80s threads. (All hail the costume assistant who located that psychedelic unicorn sweater.)

O’Keefe seems a natural choice for the adaptation, having cleverly and adeptly transformed Legally Blonde from screen to stage. Unfortunately, he and Murphy have applied the same sunny/snarky tonality to this project, which would seem to call for something more wicked. It’s difficult to feel too distressed by a show that’s pretty sure it can resolve even multiple murder with a few harmonies and a synchronized dance number.

Waters’ script is beloved for its anarchic spirit and acerbic one-liners. It certainly has its delightfully vulgar moments, such as Heather Chandler’s quip involving intimate relations with a chainsaw. Murphy and O’Keefe celebrate this crudity, building an anthem around the lyric “You make my balls so blue” and crafting an up-tempo number extolling a “swordfight in her mouth”. Director Andy Fickman augments the crassness with an array of obscene hand gestures far more varied than the choreography.

The score manages a couple of stirring numbers, chiefly the yearning ballad Seventeen. And if Freeze Your Brain will never become a cabaret standard, a paean to the Slushie certainly has novelty value. But most of the songs blur together and Fickman’s limited range pushes them toward either jolly camp (like the cringingly condescending My Dead Gay Son) or faux edginess (Dead Girl Walking). Better songs and a different directorial approach might have improved material, pushing it toward something corrosive, more singular. But this iteration? As Veronica remarks: “It’s whatever.”