If you haven’t yet heard, Tim Burton’s beloved comedy-horror film Beetlejuice has recently been made into a Broadway musical. It opened at the Winter Garden Theatre back in April and, despite initial mixed reviews, has since become a surprise hit and one of the most popular shows of the season! The production stars Alex Brightman as the mischievous spirit Beetlejuice and Sophia Anne Caruso as the young protagonist Lydia Deetz, with lyrics and music by Eddie Perfect. In spite of the show’s popularity, the producers recently announced that it will be closing this summer to make room for The Music Man. The final Broadway production will be on June 6, and there are plans to launch a national tour in 2021. But if you’re able to get to New York City within the next six months, I highly recommend you go see it before it closes! I saw the show right when it opened back in April and absolutely loved it. Read on for my thoughts:
Though based on Burton’s 1988 film, the musical differs in significant ways. The production opens with the funeral of Lydia’s mom, Emily Deetz, and Lydia sings about how the people around her feel uncomfortable with her grief. Meanwhile, Beetlejuice engineers the deaths of a young married couple, the Maitlands, as part of a plot to convince a living person to say his name three times, allowing him to fully manifest in the world of the living. When Lydia moves into the Maitlands’ home with her father and his new lover Delia (who is ostensibly there as Lydia’s life coach), Beetlejuice encourages the Maitlands to haunt them. Lydia invokes Beetlejuice in order to scare away her father, Delia, and their investors so that no one can pressure her to act happy and move on. Living among the ghosts, Lydia hopes that they can help reunite her with her dead mother, but ultimately she must learn to accept her mother’s loss.
While the musical preserves the film’s comedic tone and extravagant aesthetics, it contains a certain depth that the original film lacks. Much of this depth comes from the way that the production addresses the taboo of death, which it approaches from two different angles. On one side, we have the character of Beetlejuice, who forces the audience to confront the idea of death by throwing it in their faces. With his opening song, “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing,” Beetlejuice sets the tone for the production by warning the audience that they’re about to see “a show about death.” Morbid lyrics are set to a jazzy upbeat tune, interspersed with irreverent jokes. Audiences may be pushed outside their comfort zone by the juxtaposition of death and humor and the constant reminders of their own mortality. But by talking about death so bluntly, Beetlejuice helps to break down the taboo, and acknowledging that you can laugh and have a sense of humor about even the darkest of subjects makes it less scary.
On the other side, we have Lydia’s more serious and heartfelt plot line, which depicts the real damage that treating death as taboo can cause. Lydia’s first two songs, “Invisible” and “Dead Mom,” describe how she struggles with social isolation because the people around her don’t know how to engage with her grief. Her father, in severe death denial, refuses to talk about Lydia’s mother or mention her by name and has rushed into a new romantic relationship. Delia is a satire of “positive vibes” culture, completely uncomfortable with any display of negative emotion. Both discourage Lydia from expressing her grief and try to get her to “move on” by performing happiness. But the moral of the show is that grief is a valuable and necessary human emotion, and that you cannot heal from a loss by running away from any mention of death.
I never would have expected the bawdy bio-exorcist Beetlejuice to pull at my heartstrings and leave me bawling in the theater, but there you have it. You’ve still got six months to catch Beetlejuice on Broadway! And if you’re not near New York City, keep an ear out for more news about the upcoming national tour. When you see it, let me know what you think of the show in the comments!