That sounds like a monumental task. I had worked with a gaming company on developing a proposal for an interactive, randomly-generated musical adaptation of one of their tabletop games, and ultimately put the project on indefinite hold because the scale we were looking at was unfeasibly complex.
Last time I saw it, I was struck by sort of the opposite: how much of what COULD be offensive in today's culture is neutered by the warm-hearted nature of the material. Mel Brooks may be an equal-opportunity offender, but his sense of humor about it is oddly cuddly. The only person who the joke is ever really ON is Bialystock himself- Roger DeBris may be a drama queen, and Carmen Ghia an outdated 1950s "nelly" stereotype, but neither one is usually the target of the punch lines.
There's a weird racial undercurrent to the show that I'm not entirely sure works- but the original film "Beetlejuice" is VERY much a satire of whiteness, from the Americana hipster Maitlands to the cold, stylized and artificial "cultural" world of the Deetzes and their big-city ilk. Delia and her friends are perpetually dressing in stylized, chilly appropriations and revisions of ethnic clothes from around the world, complete with near-Kabuki makeup for the dinner
BEETLEJUICE - Pre-Broadway Tryout in DC Oct 22
2018, 10:08:02 PM
I guess they’re not counting Lydia’s opening ballad as a separate song, or the Otho sequence, as individual songs.
The NAME of the piece sounds like a self-aware, vaguely satirical look at these sorts of variety shows, but we'll see if the CONTENT is equally winking.
I strongly doubt they're going to make Beetlejuice a smaller role- in the film he's a supporting character, but they've clearly defined the character onstage as "the white equivalent of The Genie."
Beetlejuice is a lot of fun, but it's definitely more "mature" than the film version: within the first fifteen minutes alone Beetlejuice says the f-word repeatedly, snorts coke, talks about getting an STD from a beloved deceased film star, denies the existence of God, and plays the ukulele.
Plus, Beetlejuice may be bad and gross, but he's FUN. This musical has played up the neurotic, chilly tendencies in both the Maitland and the Deetz family: the Maitlands are a lot more neurotic and manic-depressive than they were in the film, with their loss of a baby MUCH more prominent than the film, and the Deetz family other than Lydia is still a mess. So BJ is a breath of fresh air between the pompous, the neurotic and the new age woo-woo of the living characters, in a way he di
It used to be that she got pregnant in college at age 20, but removed the explicit reference to her age. which puts her at approximately 38-40ish. Realistically in practice, Dianas skew older in casting.
A day later, it occurs to me that this Beetlejuice is (to some extent) an adaptation of the franchise more than of just the movie. In streamlining the film's rambling plot, they've brought in elements of both the Beetlejuice cartoon and of the long-running Graveyard Revue. In the film, Beetlejuice is a bigger cipher than the Phantom, only appearing sparingly and mostly offering Michael Keaton the opportunity to improvise and do elements of his stand-up routine where he channels Pittsb
Did they ever solidify her age? I know early on she was 38, but I believe they aged the character up a bit for Alice Ripley after the pre-Broadway version.
BEETLEJUICE - Pre-Broadway Tryout in DC Oct 15
2018, 10:21:18 PM
He says F*ck a LOT, snorts coke and talks about getting an STD from a beloved deceased film star within the first fifteen minutes.
BEETLEJUICE - Pre-Broadway Tryout in DC Oct 15
2018, 04:41:43 PM
Having just heard the opening number, I can answer some of my own and other questions. They tease the Beetlejuice melody but (at least in the opening) don't deliver it. They DO open with the minor-key "Banana Boat Song" tag that Danny Elfman sang at the opening of the film.
"Welcome to a show about death," the opening number bids us, and breaks the fourth wall repeatedly to warn the audience that death is inevitable and messy and gets very weird. Some people have been saying how Danny E
