A musical about a pallid, weirdly dressed, showmanlike ghoul? Well, that’s enough about MJ, the Michael Jackson musical that until recently occupied this theatre. Its welcome replacement is this peppy Broadway sleeper hit based on Tim Burton’s comic-gothic 1988 film.
Beetlejuice the musical is louche, macabre and pure, unadulterated fun, full of black-and-white grotesquerie, visual flair and near-the-knuckle jokes. It’s a lot less troubling than the Jackson show, even though it includes a song called Creepy Old Guy.
If you haven’t seen the movie… a) why not? and b) you may struggle slightly. When a couple of sweet newly-deads, Adam and Barbara Maitland, hire the titular “bio-exorcist” to expel an annoying, living family from their home, he causes terror in an attempt to return to the mortal world.
Scott Brown and Anthony King’s stage version evokes Burton’s tone and style and replicates many of the film’s iconic moments (including the ‘Banana Boat Song possession scene’ - IYKYK). The new stuff it brings to the table are Eddie Perfect’s polished musical numbers, which neatly distill emotion and unpack narrative. And a freewheeling, grandstanding performance from David Fynn in the title role.
Fynn, previously best known for playing Dewey in School of Rock, pays homage to Michael Keaton’s screen performance as Beetlejuice but incorporates in-jokes, ambiguity and a conspiratorial relationship with the audience. He sexually harasses Adam, makes gags about “holding space” and James Corden’s penis, and harbours a bitter animus against his fellow musical adaptee across town: “F*ck Paddington… goddam bear creeps me out.”
It’s a great, vaudevillian comic turn but Fynn shares the limelight with Hannah Nordberg, the young American actress making a dazzling West End debut as Lydia, the depressed teen whose father has bought the haunted house. Shrewdly, Brown and King shunt the charming-but-dull Maitlands (David Hunter and Chelsea Halfpenny) to the sidelines, and foreground Lydia’s grief for her dead mom. This facilitates a showstopper, actually called Dead Mom, and gives Lydia more agency in Beetlejuice’s chaotic and sometimes pervy shenanigans.
In the film, Lydia is steamrollered by her stepmom Delia, a pretentious and dreadful sculptor immortalised by the late Catherine O’Hara. Here Delia is a phony life coach hired by Lydia’s dad (Alasdair Harvey) to cheer her up (and him too, as she angles lasciviously for the stepmom slot).
This not only frees the part somewhat from O’Hara’s lingering image, it allows musical stalwart Aimie Atkinson to show her comic chops. And to wear a series of outrageous, gorgeous, geometrically-patterned frocks. Her duet with Nordberg on No Reason, a breezy number about existential despair, is a delight.
Initially it seems the creators have funked the idea of staging the limbo scenes – literally the waiting room to the netherworld – that are such a big part of the film. But they’re consolidated into the second act, complete with administrator-from-Hell Juno (Chasity Crisp) smoking through her slit throat and the shrunken-headed hunter. Which furnishes another excellent number, the exuberant tango What I Know Now, sung by the deceased and biliously-hued Miss Argentina.
Set and costume designers David Korins and William Ivey Long have their own, cartoonish take on Tim Burton’s visual style. And it must be said the show sits very well in the gaudy Prince Edward, where the clutter of Art Deco balconies resembles a pileup of coffins. It possibly also helps, subconsciously, that this venue was variously a cinema and a cabaret where Josephine Baker performed her “Bananas” dance.
Eddie Perfect’s songs are nicely varied, witty and don’t outstay their welcome (an Australian, his previous works include Shane Warne the Musical: just thought I’d mention that). Director Alex Timbers keeps things bouncy and bawdy and showcases a fine cast, especially Fynn and Nordberg, to maximum effect.
Despite jokes about pedophiles and heart attacks and the frankly necrophile air hanging over the whole thing, it manages to stay just on the right side of bad taste. An absolute scream.
Booking to Apr 2027, beetlejuicemusical.co.uk
