A little Beetlejuice goes a long way. Such was the case for the titular demon in director Tim Burton’s beloved 1988 movie. And so it is in the 2019 musical version of the movie, which began the Chicago leg of its national tour this week at the Auditorium Theatre.
Directed by Alex Timbers, “Beetlejuice” on stage (music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, original story by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson) is memorable primarily for its barrage of visual pyrotechnics and cheesy special effects. The experience is akin to being in a high-end, R-rated haunted house for two and a half hours.
It’s not an attraction suited for more sensitive ears. Beetlejuice (Justin Collette) hurls at least three F-bombs (both gesture and verbal) before his first big number — “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing” — is over. There are gags about suicide and pedophilia and child marriage. There is a whole lot of dry humping. There are severed limbs and shrunken heads worthy of a Halloween superstore. Jesus shows up as a zombie.
The plot — so Beetlejuice informs us — is a radical “departure from the original source material.” True enough. The movie centered on Barbara and Adam (Megan McGinnis and Will Burton on stage), happily married homebodies who die early on and then must haunt their own home in order to get rid of its new owners.
On stage, “Beetlejuice” is centered on the new occupants of the home. Foremost among them is Lydia (Isabella Esler), a teenager grieving the recent death of her own mother.
Lydia is the first person we meet in production’s mournful opener, “Prologue/Invisible,” Esler delivering a decently emotive rendition of composer Perfect’s forgettable, generic ballad. The mood changes abruptly when Beetlejuice bursts onstage like a demented ringmaster, gleefully yelling “Welcome to a show about death!”
Lydia’s woes are magnified by her emotionally repressed, recently widowed father Charles (Jesse Sharp). Charles is eager to move on, specifically with Lydia’s wacky, winsome life coach, Delia (Kate Marilley). When Delia, Lydia and Charles move into the late Adam and Barbara’s newly haunted home, Beetlejuice — a “bio-exorcist” — is summoned to drive them out.
The bones of the story are solid. “Beetlejuice” has everything needed for an irreverent, innovative exploration of loss woven into a rambunctious ghost story. But “Beetlejuice” is, alas, soulless. To paraphrase another famous ghost story, it’s a tale of sound and fury, signifying not much.
Instead of characters and story, “Beetlejuice” offers an onslaught of bells and whistles: Kenneth Posner’s lighting design has enough strobes for an all-night rave. Peter Nigrini’s dizzying projections whirl and blink like fractured kaleidoscopes. There are myriad afterworldly creatures, including some gigantic sandworms (from puppet designer Michael Curry). David Korins’ purposefully off-kilter set is like a Lewis Carroll fever dream. William Ivey Long’s eye-popping costumes are delightfully flamboyant and equally macabre. But there’s no disguising the show’s lack of heart or real dramatic tension under Timbers’ overall manic pace for the show.
As Beetlejuice, Collette keeps up the breakneck pace with a bourbon-over-gravel vocal fry that’s burnt to a screechy crisp. When he cackles “I do this s--- eight times a week,” it’s tough not to worry about his vocal cords. This is a role defined by stamina more than anything else, and Collette runs a credible marathon.
The cast’s relentless energy is commendable. The ensemble brings the house down with “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” turning the late, great Harry Belafonte’s hit into a joyful calypso party fueled by demonic possession. The number is a highlight for choreographer Connor Gallagher, who deftly merges the physical vocabulary of ethereal specters and lurching zombies with fleet-footed tap and gasp-inducing acrobatics.
Gallagher also does fine work with the legions of “recently deceased,” including a football team, a gospel choir, a cheerleading squad and a South American beauty queen among them. The last is Miss Argentina (Danielle Marie Gonzalez), a Netherworld receptionist and cosplay inspiration for several fabulously turned out Miss Argentinas in the audience on opening night.
Leading the ensemble in “What I Know Now,” Gonzalez offers a reminder that can’t be denied: Life is fleeting and death is “super long.” Those are words to live by, even if they are buried in a musical that fails to make the most of them.
