A common complaint of the much-loved cult classic 1988 Tim Burton film “Beetlejuice”—and its sequel—is that there’s just not enough of its fabulous titular character sprung to life, er, death, by the inimitable Michael Keaton.
The same cannot be said for the musical adaptation, directed by Alex Timbers, currently on tour as the season opener for Broadway Grand Rapids at DeVos Performance Hall, which takes much of what we love about the original film, and doubles it, if not more. But sometimes more leaves you wanting less.
However, the opening night crowd Tuesday was enormous and skewed younger than the average theatre-going crowd, with many patrons dressed in black-and-white stripes in homage to the demonic funnyman they came to see.
Justin Collette’s Beetlejuice is filthy and bawdy but rarely truly loathsome. Part stand-up comedian vying for laughs with a rapid-fire succession of punchlines, and part queer, hyper-sexed Frank-n-Furter, this jagged-up, lonely-hearted prisoner of the underworld does inspire laughter, and his political jokes land especially well (“I’m invisible, powerless, like a gay Republican”); however, he’s everywhere all at once, visually represented in one of the better musical numbers wherein every member of the ensemble becomes a Beetlejuice clone, and he’s working awfully hard for less payoff than anyone wants.
Likewise, the script (book by Scott Brown and Anthony King) and songs (Eddie Perfect) are stuffed to the max, with extra, drawn-out plot points meant to tug at the heart strings matched with overly-cluttered songs, and, at times, stale dialogue that make the show feel dated, even though its first iteration was performed in 2018.
For example, the quirky Delia, the character based on Catherine O’Hara’s brilliant role in the 1988 film, often comes across as merely imitating the incomparable Catherine O’Hara. Though Sarah Litzsinger is an especially brilliant dancer and captures this zany character largely with aplomb, she’s given tired lines, often borrowed from queer culture, that are already groan-worthy, especially coming from a white woman’s mouth, such as “YASSSS, Queen.”
The story is reminiscent of, but not terribly faithful to, the original film, and it’s far more adult-themed, even less appropriate for children. A young, childless couple (Megan McGinnis ad Will Burton) die, and though they want to effectively haunt their beloved, quirky Victorian house to scare away the wacky, sex-crazed new owners (Jesse Sharp and Sarah Litzsinger), they’re just too normal and basic to frighten anyone, not even the maudlin daughter (Nevada Riley) who’s mourning her dead mother, the only living human who can see them.
Ultimately, they summon Beetlejuice from hell to help eradicate the house of its unwanted owners, unleashing more darkness and egomania than they anticipated. A journey into the netherworld and back again, a tricky marriage, and a quest to retrieve a longed-for dead mother as well as a true sense of home, ensue in the most colorful of ways with the help of a ghoulish drum and cheer squad, a dead choir of gospel singers, a football team of zombies, terrifying giant puppets, a Latin-fusion chorus of dancing dead (with especially good choreography by Connor Gallagher), and those cloned Beetlejuices.
At best, the show is a visual delight, a colorful spectacle thanks to extraordinary scenic design by David Korins, lit exquisitely by Kenneth Posner that transforms the spooky, slanted house from Grandma’s attic to postmodern drab to funhouse weird; phenomenal cartoonish projections by Peter Nigrini; wildly fun costumes by William Ivey Long; terrifyingly weird puppets by Michael Curry; and some nicely placed moments of magic and illusion by Michael Weber and Special effects from Jeremy Chernick. And some iconic moments from the film, such as the dinner party possession scene as well as the sand worm, are especially fun translated to a live performance.
By any account, it’s a sight to behold, and captures the Tim Burton spirit that makes the morbid wacky. The characters are fun, the performances solid, and in the two-and-a-half hour performance, they cover more ground amid the living and the dead through a cartoonish world that includes a pretty spectacular netherworld than they probably should.
In one of the show’s seemingly infinite one-liners, Delia proclaims that “success” is a combination of “sucks” and “yes”. Indeed. In the case of Beetlejuice the musical, a success in terms of drawing big crowds of younger theatre goers and capitalizing on the genius of Tim Burton’s creative play between light and dark, it also works way too hard to make more of something that would do well with just a little less.
Beetlejuice
Broadway Grand Rapids
Oct. 8-13
https://broadwaygrandrapids.com/beetlejuice
