I guess the best way of assessing Beetlejuice is to offer that it’s far better
than it has a right to be. This because it is an almost relentlessly noisy
affair, and because the score, by Eddie
Perfect, is, predictably for a rock writer with no theatrical breeding,
self-consciously about its theatrical venue and wise-assly
meta about its characters and agenda, all of which is the enemy of sincerity.
But then, so is Beetlejuice, in the person of School of Rock’s Alex
Brightman. So all those wrong things add up to a package that kind of hangs together.
The
book, by Scott Brown and Anthony King reinvents the—dare I call
it an origin story, even though it ends conclusively? (I guess I’m thinking of
the animated series)—well, the how-it-happens anyway, which is not too
surprising, because in the film, Michael
Keaton’s Beetlejuice is only onscreen (onscream?) for about 20 minutes; whereas he’d have to be
more of a constant presence in a musical; not to mention the need to create a
show whose special effects, eye-popping though some may be (and the design is all very much rooted in original film director Tim Burton's template), are technically
within the bounds of live theatre. Plot-wise, the musical follows a fairly sappy
family-issues outline: renegade daughter Lydia (Sophia Anne Caruso) is distant from her father (Adam Dannheiser)
because he’s married a trophy wife (Leslie
Kritzer) before either one of them has properly
come to terms with the passing of her mom/his first wife. But snappiness is the
perfect target for Beetlejuice to skewer. Plus there’s the very sweet, very dead young married couple,
former owners of the house, who died there (Kerry Butler
and Rob McClure), as the
friendly ghosts in the attic.
For
all that Beetlejuice is a movieland theme park musical, it’s a more honest one than,
say, Pretty Woman, because the
storytelling universe is so brazenly
a theme park itself (and delivered with shameless abandon by director Alex Timbers). You can’t condemn it for
being true to its own cynicism. It is what it is. And if you know what it is,
you know whether you’ll like it.
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