His character work is masterful, from the gravelly voice, to the limber dance moves and deadpan line delivery.ĭespite the elevated focus on Lydia and Beetlejuice, though, the decidedly square Maitlands-Barbara (Kerry Butler) and Adam (Rob McClure)-provide a necessary boost of earnest ballast as steady anchors for the story, which takes place almost entirely in and around their home (with a detour to the netherworld). Brightman’s raunchy Beetlejuice is a pansexual demon vaudevillian who infuses the show with a buoyant energy and keeps the lowbrow, profanity-laced comedy flowing.
As our cheerfully craven guide to the other side, Mr. It turns out that “a show about death” has more to say about grief among the still-living than the film version ever did.
Refashioned as a tween mourning her “ dead mom”, Lydia’s suicidal angst is given a clearer purpose that builds to an emotionally satisfying and unexpectedly poignant climax in act two. With this new vision and story, setting taste aside, “Beetlejuice” excels. Timbers understands his assignment, and has created a show based on a well-known property that knows it exactly what it is and wants to do. Like Tina Landau did with “SpongeBob SquarePants” last season, Mr. “Beetlejuice” the musical is just that: the musical. Delia (Leslie Kritzer*), famously created on screen by Catherine O’Hara, is no longer Lydia’s stepmom, but rather a new age “life coach” who is schtupping her widower father, Charles (Adam Dannheisser), whose buttoned-up grief creates a rift between him and the outwardly depressed Lydia.Īs Beetlejuice ironically remarks within the musical’s first minutes: “such a bold departure from the original source material.” On stage, Beetlejuice is a fourth-wall breaking narrator who appears within the first minutes, while Lydia’s dramatic arc becomes the central plotline of the piece, instead of the deceased Maitlands’ quest to rid their home of the living.Īudience members at the Winter Garden Theatre are greeted by a dark and eerie auditorium lit with purples and greens, and the musical opens on the funeral for Lydia’s mother. This turns out to be a smart move, because it allows the story to grow and go beyond the strictures of the film in which Beetlejuice only receives 17.5 minutes of screen time (less than 20%), and Lydia has little back story. That axis homes in on a similarity that both Beetlejuice and Lydia share: their invisibility (in his case, literally), outsider status, and desire for someone to say their names.
#BEETLEJUICE DAY O SERIES#
Instead of trying to recreate the rare magic of Tim Burton’s iconic 1988 film in which a married couple die in a car accident and haunt the Victorian country home they had been meticulously restoring with the aid of a mischievous “bio-exorcist” demon named “Betelgeuse” (memorably created by Michael Keaton), the stage musical takes a cue from the popular “Beetlejuice” animated series (1989-1991), inventing an alliance between a more chipper Beetlejuice (a perfectly cast Alex Brightman) and a younger Lydia (17 year old Sophia Anne Caruso)-the goth daughter of the Deetzes who move into the Maitland home-as the axis of the story.
#BEETLEJUICE DAY O HOW TO#
As popular films continue to provide the most fertile source material for new musicals-often disappointing, rarely superlative-“ Beetlejuice”, the last new musical of the 2018-2019 Broadway season, offers a finely tuned and highly enjoyable example of just how to do it right.ĭirector Alex Timbers, bookwriters Scott Brown and Anthony King, Australian songwriter Eddie Perfect, and a top notch cast of first rate comedians have come together to craft a musical once in danger of being an overwrought retread of a beloved film ( out-of-town reviews were devastating-and deservingly so) into a ghoulishly good time that pays loving homage to the mythology of “Beetlejuice” the movie while fundamentally reorienting the story and lending it an unexpected punch of pathos amid its crass and crude mania.
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