ajhlovestheatre

BEETLEJUICE 

Music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect

Book by Scott Brown and Anthony King

based on the Geffen Company movie, story by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson 

directed by Alex Timbers

Prince Edward Theatre, London – until 17 April 2027

running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval

https://beetlejuicemusical.co.uk

Was Beetlejuice worth the wait? Musical theatre enthusiasts and fans of the 1988 movie have been clamouring for a West End transfer ever since the show bowed on Broadway the year before the pandemic. Such was its popularity that it has had two return seasons on the Great White Way over the last couple of years plus a successful tour of the USA and a major production in Australia, which is the homeland of the musical’s songwriter Eddie Perfect. So, was Beetlejuice London worth waiting for?! The answer is a resounding, triumphant yes. 

I’d even go as far as to say that the show plays slightly better here than it did originally in New York. This version may not have every one of the Broadway bells and whistles in David Korins’ macabre spectacle of scenic design, presumably adapted to tour, but the narrower (though still plenty big enough) Prince Edward Theatre focuses Alex Timber‘s flashy, go-for-broke staging more potently than the mile-wide flatness of the Winter Garden. Furthermore, Hannah Nordberg, playing Goth-y, death-obsessed teenager Lydia Deetz, trying to keep it together after the early demise of her beloved mother, finds an emotional intensity less present in the role when the show premiered on the other side of the pond. 

For the second time (the previous was in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock), David Fynn inherits Alex Brightman’s leading man mantle in a screen-to-stage adaptation. Fynn makes the titular demonic mischief maker, mighty of mouth, libido and all-round inappropriateness, gloriously his own, working the audience like a true Vaudevillian, but manic, naughty, with a real edge of danger. He and director Timbers understand that Beetlejuice needs to be as cuddly as he’s revolting and unpredictable, and as lost as he’s bumptious. You slightly fall in love with him even as you find him somewhat alarming. He hilariously overplays the gravel-voiced ghoul’s sexual attraction to David Hunter’s delightfully goofy deceased house owner Adam (although Beetlejuice basically fancies everyone), and tosses out jokes about Paddington The Musical, Shakira, James Corden and P-Diddy with indecent glee (Scott Brown and Anthony King’s witty, fast-moving script is clearly up for regular topical overhauls). It’s a terrific musical comedy performance, with extra ick and ew, which deserves to net him every Best Actor in a Musical gong available.

If Fynn is firing, delightfully, on all cylinders, Nordberg is a model of angsty restraint, and she’s utter perfection. She captures unerringly the teen’s combination of deadly (pun intended) seriousness, gauche arrogance and gawky unease. She’s so weird yet likeable, not least because Nordberg lets us see Lydia’s deep unhappiness as well as her laconic defiance, and she troubles your tear ducts in the second half when she rails at her unfeeling (to her) Dad (a superb Alasdair Harvey). On top of all that, she has an expressive, rangy voice that absolutely thrills when she unleashes it on the character’s signature numbers, the edgy ‘Dead Mom’ and broken hearted ballad ‘Home’. She’s a star in the making. 

Brown and King’s funny (ha-ha and peculiar) book has its own theatricality, owing almost as much to the world of variety as to traditional musicals, but remains faithful to the mayhem, menace and slapstick of Tim Burton’s original movie vision, the screenplay of which it sometimes diverts from, but seldom deleteriously so. William Ivey Long’s costumes (gorgeous), Kenneth Posner’s vaguely unsettling lighting and the riotous contributions of the creatives responsible for puppets, magic, special effects and wigs (Michael Curry, Michael Weber, Jeremy Chernick and Charles G Lapointe respectively) are all part of the same extravagant, wackadoodle aesthetic of a fantastical technicoloured sepulchral playground with only a tangential connection to the real world. 

Perfect’s songs -bouncy, slick and sick- aren’t necessarily all that memorable (Lydia’s numbers and the rollicking ‘Whole Being Dead Thing’ opener excepted) but they work an absolute treat in context, finding the sweet spot between pop and musical theatre. ‘Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)’ and ‘Jump In The Line (Shake Señora)’ from the movie soundtrack are inevitably included: this is a show that intrinsically knows what people want, and then gives it to them.

This is true of the performances also: Aimie Atkinson is a candy-coloured, rip-snortingly funny scream as Delia, the namaste-spouting life coach permanently on the verge of total meltdown, and Hunter and Chelsea Halfpenny are massively engaging as the Maitlands, the wholesome couple whose sudden demise kickstarts the whole haunted-house-in-reverse story, despite the fact their roles are essentially feeds for other characters’ comedy chaos. Vanessa Aurora Sierra’s loose-limbed, histrionically regretful, and very much deceased, Miss Argentina is comedy chaos personified, and we love her for it.

Richard Frame and Rachel MacDougall are hilarious as, respectively, a sham exorcist from Basildon (I kid you not) and a cookie-hawking Girl Scout with a congenital heart condition and a terminal (literally) case of over-enthusiasm. Irvine Iqbal and Chasity Crisp are grotesque and completely irresistible as a repellently amoral property developer and his clueless wife.

Connor Gallagher’s choreography is another huge string in the production’s bow, sublimely showbizzy but with jagged, angular edges, almost as though rigor mortis has already set in amongst the expertly drilled ensemble. It reaches its apotheosis in the marvellous ‘That Beautiful Sound’ number which sees multiple all-singing, all-dancing Beetlejuices seeping from every crevice and corner of Korins’ sumptuous off-kilter house set.

Ideally, the production could use another couple of ensemble members to really fill the space, and the gag-a-minute raucousness occasionally overwhelms intelligibility. If you’re not familiar with the movie (and if not, why not) the whole thing might seem a bit random. This is a smashing night out though, and a slice of popular entertainment that feels oddly appropriate to these troubled times: sure we all need escapism but there’s an added piquancy when a feel-good show taps into the low level thrum of nihilism and desperation of modern life right now. Say Beetlejuice’s name three times? You may want to see his show even more than that. 

Beetlejuice is a nasty, playful, exhilarating hit.