Astronomers can’t predict when Betelgeuse will go supernova. The celestial big dimmed in 2019, was mistaken by some for dying, after which flickered again on.
Just like the star that impressed its identify, Beetlejuice the musical stubbornly refuses to die. After a rocky begin on the Nationwide Theatre in 2018 throughout its pre-Broadway tryout, the present transferred to Broadway, shuttered in the course of the pandemic, went viral with followers on-line, and rose once more.
Eight years in the past, when Beetlejuice first haunted the Nationwide, I identified its deadly flaw for DC Theater Arts: the present couldn’t determine whether or not it needed to be a innocent Gen X nostalgia automobile or an angsty teen drama. I wanted then that Lydia would run off to boarding faculty with Hamlet and depart us to our enjoyable.
The creators seem to have taken the alternative route. They saved the grief, made Lydia much more central, and stripped away a number of the bawdy humor that made the striped specter so endearing.
A lot for the ability of the critic.
Now again on the Nationwide on its second nationwide tour cease right here since 2023, the present nonetheless appears caught in limbo.
Ryan Stajmiger performs Beetlejuice reverse Leianna Weaver’s Lydia, and like Alex Brightman, who originated the position, Stajmiger chews each scene as if he hasn’t eaten in two or three millennia. Perpetually aggrieved, along with his hair on finish and his opinions on blast, he’s your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, solely greener and deader.
The musical’s mistake, then as now, is the choice by e-book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King and composer-lyricist Eddie Good to make Lydia the emotional engine of the night. In Tim Burton’s 1988 movie, she is a morbid teenager and, in her personal phrases, “unusual and strange,” however she isn’t requested to hold a full-length grief play on her shoulders. The musical turns her right into a perpetual mourner, saddling her with self-annihilative arias higher suited to Madama Butterfly than Rocky Horror, which is that this present’s non secular cousin.
Weaver sings impressively, however every time her Lydia takes heart stage for a wrenching solo about her late mom, the music feels beamed in from one other present and we’re left in a state of awkward confusion. Are we meant to giggle at her macabre streak in songs like “Lifeless Mother” or be moved by her sorrow? The present’s obvious reply: sure.
This can be a manufacturing perpetually at battle with itself: an irreverent, tasteless comedy fused to a grieving woman’s earnest indie-rock musical. There’s nothing incorrect with a Broadway musical wishing to tackle grief, particularly in our death-avoidant tradition. However grief deserves a greater automobile than a present with poop jokes.
Tour director Catie Davis retains the proceedings shifting at a sooner clip than in 2018 and leaves the present’s remaining pleasures intact, most notably William Ivey Lengthy’s Día de los Muertos costumes, David Korins’ Edward Gorey-inspired units, and the well-known Day-O dinner scene with these big, possessed prawns that can make you swear off shellfish perpetually.
Eddie Good’s rating continues to be largely forgettable even when amped all the way in which up — loud sufficient, at instances, to drown out the very best singers within the forged. The exception is “What I Know Now,” a Netherworld tango added after the DC tryout, by which a former magnificence queen regrets ending her life and extols the earthly pleasures she lower quick. Carly Natania Grossman, understudying Miss Argentina on opening night time, deserves a double dose of reward: for pinch-hitting, and for bringing down the home with the night’s most rousing celebration of life.
“What I Know Now” proves the artistic crew might have discovered the suitable option to mix humor and melancholy, however in the long run, they hitched their ambitions to the incorrect IP. Fortuitously for DC audiences, a greater tackle ghosts, reminiscence, and remorse is coming subsequent season to Shakespeare Theatre Firm: Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. If solely lets say “Sondheim” 3 times and convey him again.
Working Time: Roughly two hours and half-hour, together with intermission.
Beetlejuice performs by way of July 19, 2026, on the Nationwide Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC. Tickets can be found on-line or by calling Broadway at The Nationwide at (202) 628-6161. Really helpful for ages 13 and up; parental discretion suggested. Accommodates robust language and mature references. An audio-described efficiency is obtainable July 12 at 7:30 pm, and an ASL-interpreted efficiency is obtainable July 16 at 7:30 pm.
Solid and inventive credit for the North American tour will be discovered right here.
Beetlejuice
Music and lyrics by Eddie Good. E-book by Scott Brown and Anthony King. Music supervision, orchestrations, and incidental music by Kris Kukul. Tour route by Catie Davis; unique route by Alex Timbers. Tour choreography by Michael Fatica; unique choreography by Connor Gallagher.
