One way to attract younger audiences to the theater: ’90s nostalgia.

That might sound mercenary, but in Ray of Light Theatre’s “Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical,” repackaging oldies by Ace of Base, TLC and Deep Blue Something proves quite powerful. Each time a character in the musical adaptation of the 1999 film bursts into a song, a few in the crowd recognize the bars right away, despite the way music director Jad Bernardo might cleverly remix the familiar — slowing down to a bump ’n’ grind, finding the serious in camp and vice versa.

The audible “eureka” moments of the quickest sleuths spur everyone else on. You find yourself anticipating lyrics as if sleepwalking and then wondering how and why, a quarter-century later, such information still resides in your brain. Then, when a verse or chorus quenches the suspense — Marcy Playground! Boyz II Men! — it’s a moment of collective rebirth, as if all are realizing that a silly pop song, ostensibly forgotten, stood for something vivid and meaningful in their past.

Sometimes, the plot of the show, which opened Saturday, Sept. 9, at the Victoria Theatre, is almost incidental to this experience, a mere scaffolding on which to hang songs, especially in sequences when a new number seems to pop in every second or third line. But the story, about evil Upper East Side stepsiblings Sebastian (Jake Gale) and Kathryn (Chelsea Holifield), is quite well suited to the stage, where their over-the-top villainy can level up like a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger transforming into a Megazord.

Here, as Sebastian plots to bed committed virgin Annette (Marah Sotelo) and Kathryn schemes to ruin raging dork Cecile (Anne Norland), for whom her ex has dumped her, the two have musical theater’s superpowers. They can be so bad as to stop time or make Weili Shi’s lighting design flower in shades of turquoise and plum or smolder in crimson. The colors make a playground of Matt Owens’ set design, a multi-level tower of arched doorways that testifies to the prep school edifice of power from which these characters hail.

If some singers squeak and many dancers bungle their moves, many performers still prove their mettle. Sotelo’s powerhouse vocals achieve escape velocity into the exosphere. Doug Greer, as a closeted gay football player, burlesques machismo as if he’s a little kid desperately pretending his big-boy pants fit. Then, when he gets a booty call from Blaine (a superb Samuel Prince), his expression dissolves into the vocal equivalent of ’80s pop keyboard.

真正的显示偷窃者,诺兰庄园,其Cecile still has a dollhouse in her room and effervesces about sex as a secret society while everyone else is snorting cocaine or scoring with their therapist’s daughter. In Norland’s rendering, Cecile is so out of place it’s as if she’s wearing invisible braces, retainer and orthodontic headgear all at once; at any moment, she could start slobbering over everyone, accidentally expose her flesh or attempt a come-hither pose with all the sophistication of an 8-year-oldplaying with Barbies.

Directed by Leslie Waggoner, “Cruel Intentions,” which is based on the novel and play “Dangerous Liaisons,” isn’t sure of its attitude about Sebastian. The movie wanted us to sympathize at least in part with his redemption, but more than two decades later, those politics feel off. As one audience member put it on opening night, calling out to a surrendering Annette, “Don’t do it, girl!”

The role might be cursed: Give it too much charisma, and it’s like you agree with Sebastian; make Sebastian’s transformation too serious, and the fun’s all gone; discount it, and the show has no stakes. Ryan Phillippe was a wet blanket in the film, and Gale doesn’t fare much better, making Sebastian a stick in the mud.

Still, his story has a purpose. It’s a chance for us all to reckon with the fact that NSYNC’s choreo looked like little boys having temper tantrums and we once thought that was cool. It reminds us all how phallic the era’s video game joysticks were. And it’s a chance for us all to sing along to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn.”

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com