Review: BEETLEJUICE THE MUSICAL at Starlight Theatre

How appropriate is it that the musical version of “Beetlejuice” should materialize at Starlight Theatre on the cusp of the Halloween and just before the Mexican “Day of the Dead?”   Our Starlight audience loved it!   

"Beetlejuice" is a show that screams for “Dad” jokes or other bad puns. Since I’m someone who strives never to disappoint, this “Beetlejuice” cast was absolutely “Spooktacular.”  One of the opening gags has one of the characters pulling out a “femur” (upper leg bone) to illustrate a “boner” joke. I found it humerus (the funny bone) in the extreme!

OK, you get the drift of the kind of jokes we are looking at?  “Beetlejuice” does find a beating heart beneath all its graveyard humor. Death is an unlikely subject for a feel-good musical, but this show pulls it off.

 “Beetlejuice” is adapted from Tim Burton’s 1988 film of the same name starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Gena Davis, and Wynona Ryder.  The film has never shown much interest in behaving itself, but it was a hoot.

The musical version combines supernatural mischief, deliberately tasteless comedy and a surprisingly earnest story about a daughter mourning her mother. Its most interesting achievement is giving the mayhem an emotional purpose.

Oddly, “Beetlejuice” has achieved cult status.  Many members of the Starlight audience came dressed as the central characters.  It seems like a Disney musical where the characters have just passed the legal drinking and are able to indulge.

The current touring company features Ryan Stajmiger as the striped-suit troublemaker and Leianna Weaver as Lydia Deetz. Ryan is a delightful comedian with an gravelly voice.  Leianna passes for a pre-teenager, but this lady has a big time mezzo soprano hiding inside all the “goth” make-up and black costuming.

David Wilson and Kaitlin Feely play Adam and Barbara Maitland, the recently deceased homeowners whose attempts to haunt their own house bring them into an increasingly disastrous partnership with Beetlejuice.

Jeff Brooks plays Lydia’s father, Charles. His character is surprisingly understated which makes his portrayal ring significantly truer than it might otherwise have been.  Bailey Frankenberg plays Delia. She is Charles lover and Lydia’s life coach.  She is appropriately and delightfully slutty.  Think Miss Adelaide from “Guys and Dolls”

Although the show’s title belongs to the demon character, the story belongs to Lydia. Her fascination with death grows out of grief that her Mom has just passed and her frustration with the adults in her life who seem determined to move past a loss Lydia cannot. The recently deceased ghosts she meets (her house's previous owners) offer companionship; Beetlejuice offers something considerably more dangerous—the illusion that he can give her control.

The shift plot shift to Lydia gives the musical a stronger dramatic spine than a simple parade of familiar movie scenes would have provided. Lydia needs to find a way to live with loss. Beetlejuice is invisible to most and he needs someone to unleash him by repeating his name three times. Conflicting desires supply both the comedy and the stakes.

Australian composer Eddie Perfect’s score favors theatrical personality, rhythmic punch and comic storytelling. “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing” establishes the evening’s irreverent rules, while “Say My Name” turns persuasion into a musical contest. Lydia’s “Dead Mom” and “Home” give the show room to express feelings that cannot be dismissed with another dirty joke.

The music is most effective when it advances a relationship or reveals a need. Its appeal lies less in a procession of elegant, stand-alone melodies than in how closely the songs fit these peculiar characters.

Librettistics Scott Brown and Anthony King’s book makes irreverence its operating principle. Beetlejuice treats theatrical conventions, good taste and personal boundaries as invitations to misbehave. The danger in that approach is repetition: a show so eager to top its last outrageous joke can leave too little breathing room for the next one. The quieter passages matter because they give the comedy something to interrupt.

For this tour, Catie Davis directs and Michael Fatica choreographs, following the original work of Alex Timbers and Connor Gallagher. The credited design team includes David Korins for scenery and William Ivey Long for costumes—essential contributors to a musical whose identity depends heavily on its grotesque visual imagination.

But spectacle alone cannot make “Beetlejuice” work. Its central theatrical challenge is balance: the title character must be outrageous enough to command attention without swallowing Lydia’s story. The Maitlands, meanwhile, provide the ordinary human decency against which his gleeful selfishness becomes funny.

Summing up, the script tends to be a little weak, but this cast is surprisingly entertaining and makes up for it.  The score is super, well performed, and appropriate if a little jokey.

Evidence of Catie Davis’s directorial style surfaces in a certain drilling the actors have benefited from.  Her vision for how a musical number should look surfaces when you compare how disparate characters gesture their way through songs and dance numbers.  This is not criticism as much as it is a recognition of how hard they have all worked to become a unit under the eye of their director.

“Beetlejuice” is an unruly musical, and its insistence on being naughty can become a tad wearing. Yet beneath the vulgarity is a sound dramatic idea: the dead have something to teach the living, but the living must eventually choose their own world.

“Beetlejuice” may get the top billing but Lydia, the grieving little girl, gives the show its reason to exist. Performances continue at Starlight Theatre through Sunday, October 4.  It isn’t a kid’s show, but it is entertaining.  Tickets are available online or at the Starlight box office. Curtains are at 7:30 p.m. in the evening.

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