In 2019, I interviewed the creatives behind the then-Broadway-bound Beetlejuice The Musical. The Musical. The Musical. on my Theater In The Round program at Pacifica National Public Radio. I was reminded that the man behind their new stage show’s music and lyrics—Eddie Perfect—had a background in punk rock with albums such as Angry Eddie, Drink Pepsi, Bitch and Misanthropology.
While I wouldn’t necessarily call the road-show edition of Beetlejuice now at Philadelphia’s Academy Of Music (through August 3, with dates in Detroit, Cleveland and North Carolina to follow) a big punk moment (despite its titular character’s Kingfisher hair-don’t and the score’s spiky, riff-heavy elements), I will say this: Beetlejuice The Musical. The Musical. The Musical. is a celebration of all that is Goth-Pop-Plus with its black-lace protagonists, pancake-grey makeup and angular stage design. What else could it be, subtitled as it is from the very start, “a show about death.”
Based on Tim Burton’s dark funhouse 1988 film, with hints of inspiration from that flick’s funereal/carnival soundtrack from composer Danny Elfman (then still famous for Oingo Boingo), Beetlejuice: The Musical. lays on its goth vibe thick from its first moments and its repeated bleakly humorous theme of “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing” featuring Beetlejuice and his black-wearing mourners’ ensemble.
Though Beetlejuice: The Musical. maintains much of the Burton film’s storyline and monstrous FX (from the pie-in-the-sky-optimistic marrieds whose dying at story’s start gives us a setting to the flesh-eating sandworms making their appearance at just the right time), book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King give theater goers an interesting twist not available from the movie. Rather than a family moving into the home of the aforementioned now-deceased Maitlands, it’s the mourning, black-wearing Lydia Deetz character with a dead mom (the funeral that begins our story) and her widower father—together with a ditzy life coach/new girlfriend—who take over the Maitlands’ cozy home, looking to start a new life with sleazy opportunism as the adult couple’s initial goal.
Yet, Lydia does not want to start anew with a fresh life in a new house or see her father move forward without their dead mother/wife. Lydia wants to find a way to keep her mom’s memory alive—by any means necessary, a clever plot twist that fuels the second half of Beetlejuice: The Musical. and doubles as a cunning way in which to welcome back yet another beloved character from Burton’s black-comic film: Juno, the elderly matriarchal, chain-smoking guardian of hell.
So, what does Lydia do to get her wish? She says “Beetlejuice” three times and manifests him into reality, thus closing out the first act with a gloriously disastrous end. Lydia becomes the demonically dancing man’s hand-wringing accomplice in order to keep her new home happiness free and continues prodding Beetlejuice to aid her in reuniting with her dead mother in the netherworld. This requires Lydia following the rules of Handbook For The Recently Deceased—another part of Beetlejuice’s plot for true free-world immortality, a chance to finally rid himself of Barbara and Adam Maitland for good, then marry Lydia. That none of this works out for Beetlejuice is what ends the musical, despite his yelling, “Sequel!”
Along with some genuinely stunning renditions of Lydia’s dark, big-sounding ballad (“Dead Mom”), an all-singing, all-Day-Of-The-Dead-worthy dance number (“That Beautiful Sound,” with its dozen Beetlejuices) and a great-goth, penultimate, full-cast number where the titular character makes his grand last stand (“Creepy Old Guy”), the set design of Beetlejuice: The Musical is yet another of its brightest, bleakest stars, with its reworking from cozy, upstate suburban nook to Dark Shadows-worthy mansion, along with the second act’s deceptively simple, but wildly Hitchcockian descent into the netherworld—all from the minds of scenic and lighting designers David Korins and Kenneth Posner.
As for the cast of Beetlejuice:The Musical, Justin Collette (Beetlejuice), Emilia Tagliani (Lydia) and really everyone else onstage were absolutely and equitable amazing—to a person—for being dead. And if you go and truly wish to fit in, check out the photos and dress like its characters. As with the Cure, Bauhaus and its goth-godhead ilk, it’s the dressed-alike, hair-teased audience that makes the show spin forward like a spider web.
—A.D. Amorosi
