On November 21, the Broadway musical version of the 1992 movie Death Becomes Her opened, followed a day later by the movie version of the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked, both to widespread (if not universal) acclaim. Wicked and Death Becomes Her are classics of the female frenemy genre, described by Jennifer Weiner in a Sunday New York Times op-ed of November 24, “‘Wicked’ and the Glory of Frenemies”
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| Megan Hilty and company. Photos: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. |
However,
while Weiner lists several other frenemy-themed movies, like Legally Blonde,
Clueless, and so forth, she never mentions Death Becomes Her,
which surely fits her description of works whose endings are secondary to their
journeys: “The main characters draw each other out and learn from each other
not in order to achieve the cliché of happily ever after but for the experience
of friendship in its own right.” (Incidentally, Robert Zemeckis’s Death
Becomes Her, despite its cult status—especially in the gay community—has
never been considered a first-class film. It rates, in fact, only a squashed
green tomato score of 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.)
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| Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Josh Lamon, Christopher Sieber. |
She adds,
“The stories are powered by the shifting dynamics between love and hate,
gratitude and resentment, and admiration and contempt, and that’s what makes
them so resonant.” These and other insights are as applicable to Wicked as
to Death Becomes Her, whose Broadway incarnation, bubbling with both the
joie de vivre and the joie de mort.
It presents
the sensational Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard in the farcically overcharged
roles of, respectively, ultra-vain stage and screen diva Madeline Ashton, and
the initially plain-Jane novelist Helen Sharp, played on film by Meryl Streep
and Goldie Hawn at the peak of their lissome appeal. Like them, Hilty and
Simard excel as satirical avatars of narcissistic women afraid of losing their looks as they creep ever
more closely to the grave.
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| Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Christopher Sieber. |
In the
works since 2017, when a different cast (including Kristin Chenowith) and
creative team were involved, the show comes to Broadway following a successful
Chicago tryout earlier this year. Naturally, its book, by Marco Pennette, takes
some liberties—both legitimate and questionable—with Martin Donovan and David
Koepp’s screenplay, although sticking to its essential plot. Its music and
lyrics, by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, is persistently upbeat, preferring
laughter to sentiment.
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| Christopher Sieber. |
Madeline, starring in a Broadway musical, is visited backstage
by her old friend, Helen, accompanied by her fiancée, plastic surgeon Dr,
Ernest Menville, played by the excellent Christpher Sieber in the straight-man role
that even Bruce Willis had a hard time making funny in the movie. The
possessively selfish Madeline steals Ernest for herself, not least because of
his ability to help preserve her looks.
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| Jennifer Simard, Christopher Siebert. |
Years go by and Helen, so obsessed with Madeline’s betrayal
that she’s institutionalized, snaps out of it when her counselor says she must
“eliminate [Madeline] once and for all.” (In the movie, Helen’s depression leads
her to pig out over seven years and—before she trims off the pounds—become as
bloated as Jiminy Glick. The show, with stars lacking the sleekness of the
originals, cancels any suggestions of weight-related humor.)
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| Jennifer Simard, Megan Hilty, Christopher Siebert. |
Helen, now glammed up, and the author of a hit book, arrives
in Hollywood to take her revenge on Madeline, who—though her career hasn’t gone
beyond a sci-fantasy called Dogstronaut—lives in a fabulous mansion,
grand staircase included, with Ernest. Their income seems derived from his
plastic surgery practice, not reconstructive mortician, as in the film. The
women’s enmity climaxes with Madeline, pushed, tumbling down that winding
staircase, albeit via a plot device different from that on screen.
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| Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard. |
However, because she drank from a magical potion for both
rejuvenation and eternal life, provided at great expense by a flamboyant Hollywood
sorceress, Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child)—called in the
movie Lisle von Ruhman and played by a more than half-naked Isabella Rossellini—not
only is she not dead, her head—for the moment, at any rate—is facing backward.
Soon, Helen becomes Madeline’s shooting target, the result being a huge hole
where her stomach used to be. The hapless Ernest nearly goes nuts trying to
cover up the women’s deaths and physical deterioration, while they decide to
live on, using his skills used to disguise the condition of their already
deteriorating bodies.
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| Michelle Williams. |
These and similar moments of grand guignol comic horror are
among the movie’s most well-loved contributions, the CGI effects used to
produce them having won an Academy Award. Unfortunately, much as Tim Clothier’s
“illusions”—which includes the obvious use of doubles—are clever, they can’t
help but seem cheesy (and insufficient) compared with what’s on screen. Since
the quality of the special effects are so integral to the movie, some might
believe the lack of anything short of equaling or bettering them should have
been enough to short circuit the production.
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| Michelle Williams, Megan Hilty. |
In fact, one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, its
conclusion, has been radically altered, not for the better. In the original, 37
years after the main events, the women leave Ernest’s funeral, fall down some
stairs, and break into pieces. A close-up shows their severed heads lying on
the ground, their grotesquely painted faces rotting, chatting with casual
insouciance, their friendship alive even when there’s practically nothing left
of them. In the show, the scene is 50 years later, Ernest is still alive, and what
we see of the women’s fate is both a dramatic and theatrical copout.
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| Taurean Everett and company. |
As a show, Death Becomes Her gives audiences over two
and a half hours of campy, fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek musical action, directed
by Christopher Gattelli (who also choreographed) to not let a minute pass
without trying for a laugh, at least when Simard and Hilty are onstage. This
often leads to wink-wink mugging and line readings, saved from seeming
self-indulgent by the performer’s ineffable charm and obvious awareness of the
dialogue and situations’ extremes.
The film itself is so over-the-top that much of the enjoyment
it provides comes from witnessing how hard Streep, Hawn, Willis, and Rossellini
work to play broadly while remaining (relatively) believable human beings. Too
often, though, the already exaggerated material is further exaggerated when
done live, nuance be damned. Which isn’t to deny that many audience members
respond with perpetual whooping and shouts of laughter.
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| Company of Death Becomes Her. |
While none of the individual songs seem destined to be
standards, they’re all pleasantly listenable and their lyrics can be amusing.
One number, for example, that gets a rousing reception is “For the Gaze,” sung by
Hilty in a deliberately old-fashioned Broadway-style number spiffed up by
chorus boys, where the words say that everything the singer does to look
beautiful is “for the gaze,” which, of course, is meant to sound like “for the
gays,” receiving, in turn, roof-shaking approval from a significant segment of
the audience. Sieber’s two numbers include a clever patter song, “The Plan,”
sung as the items in his workshop suddenly become animated. Michelle Williams’s
singing, as in “If You Want Perfection,” is as magnificent as her glittery appearance,
but she doesn’t get the comic acting opportunities granted Isabella Rossellini
in the film.
The 11 o’clock number, “Alive Forever,” shared by Hilty and
Simard, is another roof shaker, as they launch vocal rockets. Madeline’s lyrics,
as per Weiner’s thesis, insists that Helen, her longtime frenemy, actually
likes her, and vice versa, with Helen agreeing to forgive and forget. It’s
about as close to human warmth as the show ever gets, even as the stars vie to
outdo each other with their musical pyrotechnics.
At a reported cost of $31.5 million, Death Becomes Her provides
lots of traditional Broadway spectacle, with often elaborately glitzy costumes
by Paul Tazewell, including an array of black and flesh-colored tights for the
androgynous chorus of “Immortals” that surrounds Viola Van Horn. (No use searching
for the movie’s Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, or Elvis Presley
lookalikes, though). Charles LaPointe’s fantastic wigs are another visual
delight, as are the flashy scenic backgrounds designed by Derek McLane,
excitingly lit by Justin Townsend.
Does the show improve on the movie, or is the movie superior?
In some ways, each is better than the other. On the other hand, though, each is
far from perfect; then again, what isn’t?
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 W. 46th Street, NYC
Open run
