“Mourning Becomes Frenetic”
Recently, some theatre-crazy kid from an Alabama city I
never heard of, who follows me on Instagram, couldn’t resist reporting how psyched
he was that a musical based on Beetlejuice, Tim
Burton’s hugely popular, horror-comedy film of 1988, was coming to Broadway. Given his address, his chances of
seeing it in the immediate future are slim. My own cavils aside, I'm sure he'd enjoy it if he could.
This latest Broadway adaptation of a popular movie (with music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, and a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King) makes many alterations to the movie version’s plot but it incorporates enough familiar elements to keep most enthusiasts happy. Like the movie, Beetlejuice, the Musical is an outlandishly ghoulish goulash of ghostly gallivanting led by the roguishly mischievous, titular spirit-in-chief (a.k.a. Betelgeuse to the cognoscenti).
He, of course, was played with inimitably deadpanned snark
by Michael Keaton in the movie; here, he’s given a mega-pumped-up, gravely-voiced
rendition by the fright-wigged Alex Brightman (School of Rock), Broadway’s newest heir-apparent to the musical farceur's throne of Nathan Lane.
Beetlejuice, briskly
directed like a runaway train by Alex Timbers, speeds by on whatever death jokes it can squeeze from its relentlessly over-the-top barrage of double entendres, rude language, slapstick,
scare-slanted humor, Halloween-like special effects, puppets small and huge (from
a ravenous roast pig to a humongous sandworm), and assorted examples of the kookily uncanny. 
It opens at a Charles Addams-like funeral during which we’re
gleefully welcomed “to a show about death.” As Beetlejuice sings “The Whole
Being Dead Thing” he tells us not to be freaked because “I do this bullshit
eight times a week.” The plot that follows concerns a young couple, Barbara (Kerry
Butler, Mean Girls) and Adam Maitland
(Rob McClure, Chaplin), who die when
the floor of the big, suburban house they’ve bought collapses under them. For
the rest of the show, they’re charming ghosts, like clueless versions of George
and Marion Kerby in Topper. 
The new owners are the Deetzes, Charles (Adam Dannheiser)
and Delia (Leslie Kritzer), his whacky second wife. He’s a real estate developer
planning to redesign the house as the model for a new, gated community; she
calls herself a “life coach.” With them is their darkly depressed, goth,
teenage daughter, Lydia (Sophia Anne Caruso), grieving for her late mother
(whose funeral opens the show and about whom she even sings a song called “Dead Mom”). She’s also got
that The Sixth Sense knack
of seeing dead people. 
The plot's complexities, lots of them happening in the “netherworld,”
and some of them extraneous and time-bloating, concern two main things: 1) Lydia’s scheming with
the goofy Maitlands to scare the Deetzes away and abandon the house; 2)
Beetlejuice’s efforts to get someone to say his name three times in a row,
allowing him to return to life.
These springboards give free rein to a succession of inventive visual, comic, and musical delights, including some remarkable effects on David Korins’s wildly imaginative set via the magic of Kenneth Posner’s lights and Peter Nigrini’s projections.
These springboards give free rein to a succession of inventive visual, comic, and musical delights, including some remarkable effects on David Korins’s wildly imaginative set via the magic of Kenneth Posner’s lights and Peter Nigrini’s projections.
The lyrics are often risibly clever but the music is best at
creating upbeat rhythmic backgrounds for Connor Gallagher’s zanily manic,
thrillingly acrobatic choreography. (In one number, a dancer flipped off the
stage to make a perfect landing two inches from my aisle seat.) Too many of the
tunes, though, sound like the generic, big-note numbers that seem to populate every other 21st-century
musical. 
When it comes to those notes, though, few sock ‘em into the balcony
like the terrific, sprite-like, 17-year-old Caruso. Still, when a new musical
has to compete with two classic calypso numbers, also in the movie, “The Banana
Boat Song” and “Shake Your Body Line,” the contrast between the kind of music
you remember and the kind you don’t couldn’t be clearer. 
Beetlejuice is juiced
with hydrogen-powered, cartoon-style performances that maintain enough humanity
to let us accept the characters as minimally believable. Kritzer is a flashy
treasure with Carol Burnett-like clown chops, while Kerry Butler and
Rob McClure (she, especially) make you forget Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin as
the movie originals.
Alex Brightman—whose School
of Rock performance was eerily reminiscent of Jack Black’s in that show’s movie
source—appears to have Black in his bones. Thrillingly energetic and comically
crude as he is, it’s hard not to feel Black would play this part in much the
same way. Doesn’t matter, as it’s impossible to take your eyes off him, or his
ability to find the right look, tone, or rhythm for every line and reaction.
For all the show’s relentlessly hellsapoppin’ antics, you’ll
need a youthful spirit to fully appreciate them. Some older theatregoers
may wonder when the two-and-a-half-hour show’s hyper-sophomorism will finally wear out. As long as I was able to push such thoughts from my head, I had
a pretty good time. I can’t deny occasionally feeling I was six feet under but that doesn't mean that Beetlejuice, which insists it's about death, isn't very much alive.
Winter
Garden Theatre
1634
Broadway, NYC
Open
run
OTHER
VIEWPOINTS:
