Review: BEETLEJUICE at Hollywood Pantages

As IP-raided, screen-to-stage properties go, this one might be the Beetle-juiciest.

The acclaimed and well-traveled musical of BEETLEJUICE has returned to the Hollywood Pantages for a 16-performance run through March 22 as part of its national tour. With all its visual delights on full display, the non-Equity production directed by Catie Davis (from the original direction by Alex Timbers) is a carnival of the macabre. We’re looking largely at BEETLEJUICE the movie, set to song and with a few plot tweaks. Brash, ribald, frequently raw and shamelessly sappy and containing a witty score by Eddie Perfect, it’s pretty damned irresistible.

The same can be said of its title hero, an amoral dude-bro of a ghoul who will go to any means to advance his ends in the netherworld (meaning when you’re dead) and maybe even make it back to the world of the living. To engineer this scheme, Beetlejuice (played by Ryan Stajmiger) preys on a straight-arrow couple, Adam and Barbara Maitland (David Wilson and Kaitlin Feely). The newly-deceased Maitlands are as sweet and boring as Beetlejuice is crude and loose cannon-y. When they can’t help him, the Juice turns to Lydia Deetz (Leinna Weaver), a lonely young woman mourning the death of her mother and ignored by her father, Charles (Jeff Brooks). The Deetzes have moved into the Maitlands’ home. The Maitlands want them gone, which Lydia – who can see ghosts - wants as well. So if someone hires Beetlejuice to scare out the interlopers, then everybody wins.

This probably sounds more or less like was going on in the 1988 Tim Burton-directed movie written by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. But the musical’s book writers, Scott Brown and Anthony King, have done some tinkering and sort of ramped up the stakes, especially as pertains to Lydia Deetz who is now trying to reunite her family.  

Beetlejuice is the evening’s MC and anti-hero, not the wild card master of mayhem who appeared half an hour into the movie. We meet him early and listen to him regale first the audience and subsequently the Maitland’s about “This whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing.” It’s a jazzy number that warns us that what we’re about to watch is a musical about death. And Beetlejuice, because he is, ya know, an actual ghost, proves just the cat to explain the rules…along with cheerleaders, special effects and whatever additional technical brio the production musters.

Of which there is an abundance. The world of BEETLEJUICE includes creatures, some mildly icky gross-out effects, mild jump scares, body parts, a chorus of singing and dancing Beetlejuices, and oh so very much more. Some of it is original while other bits are callbacks to the film (this afterlife would be incomplete without the shrunken head guy). Credit certainly to an all-star lineup of scenic designer David Korins, puppet designer Michael Curry, special effects designer Jeremy Chernick, magic and illusion designer Michael Weber and makeup designer Joe Dulude II for making this circus so creepily joyous.

Where Beetlejuice is his own (after) life force. The Maitlands radiate a different energy. They’re basically a too-cute couple who have left the domesticity of their Neil Simon comedy and walked into THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW instead. Wilson and Feely enjoy some solid nerdy sympatico, particularly in “Ready, Set, Not Yet,” a song about all the things they’re doing instead of having children. Relegated a bit to being second bananas as the plot develops, Feely winningly shows signs of the “Barbara 2.0” she will eventually become with the applause-worthy line “Let’s haunt this bitch!”

Power generator #3 is Lydia Deetz. As tempting as it must be for an actress to channel what Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega have already done, Leianna Weaver’s Lydia is solidly wrestling her own darkness into submission. Clad largely in goth black (William Ivey Long’s wardrobe is, in many cases, quite literally to die for), Weaver torments her would-be step-mother, Delia (Bailey Frankenberg, quite funny), stands up to the creeps of the netherworld and is the ghoulish yang to Stajmiger’s yin when Beetleuice and Lydia team up. During more somber moments, Weaver is also creditable as a girl who misses her mother. Its title notwithstanding, her early number “Dead Mom” is plenty affecting.  

As for the man playing the Juice himself, Stajmiger is clearly having a grand old time and then some. Grubby and green-haired, the actor trades on his considerable offkey charm throughout Beetlejuice’s journey making him impossible to root against. Whether flaunting, cajoling, groping, heckling an audience member or tossing out a not infrequent bird or f-bomb, Stajmiger leaves us wanting more.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, THE MUSICAL SEQUEL THE MUSICAL SEQUEL anyone? Stranger Things could certainly happen.

BEETLEJUICE plays through March 22 at 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.