Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!
Review by Lauren Kalinowski
Beetlejuice the Musical
Lyrics by Eddie Perfect, book by Scott Brown and Anthony King
Music by Eddie Perfect
based on the movie by Tim Burton
Produced by Broadway Across Canada
Jubilee Auditorium, Edmonton
January 17, 2025
When I entered the Jubilee foyer on January 17 for Beetlejuice the Musical, the usual stuffy crowd had been replaced by teenagers (and young-at-heart adults) dressed up in fun macabre-gothic costumes. I admired the on-theme manicure of a woman with black and white striped nails accented with lime green ahead of me in line as we were handed our playbills.
The 2018 show, with music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect and book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, is based on the wildly successful 1998 horror-comedy movie directed by Tim Burton. The musical theatre crowd was excited for the show, so I was too. We took our first balcony seats in anticipation while blue, purple, and red spotlights swirled around the theatre. A “Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse” marquee sign blinked over the stage curtains.
Justin Collette, a Canadian himself now touring with Broadway Across Canada, has been playing Beetlejuice, an exorcist ghost, since 2022. He maintains the character’s scratchy, sassy voice through the entire show as he breaks the wall and chats directly with the audience. He had us laughing right from the get-go with tongue-in-cheek comments as “our guide” after the opening song from teenager character Lydia Deetz. “Holy crap, a ballad already? and such a bold departure from the source material,” is the crass, irreverent tone of the whole wild and wacky musical.
The story gets lost in the spectacle as we follow young Lydia, played by the phenomenal Madison Mosley with her bright, powerful voice. Her mother has died and she feels invisible – just like Beetlejuice who’s been looking for attention for hundreds of years. The two feel like equally bratty characters looking for attention. There just isn’t enough story for buy-in to empathize with either one, though their antics are entertaining. We’re here to watch Beetlejuice be Beetlejuice and listen to Lydia sing.
The second song, BJ’s intro to the show, “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing,” is the standout hit. He crosses through, pop, heavy rock, broadway chorus and gregorian chant in an avante-garde Broadway composition, showing the range and talent of the singer. It holds the best line in the whole show, “We should have carpe’d way more diems now we’re never gonna see ‘em” in a musical montage of thoughts about the show and death.
Lydia and her father Charles move into a dead couple’s house after the death of her mother. He brings along a life coach to help her “get better”, and he’s busy with development plans and business deals. The original owners, the Maitlands, are a couple of squares who are supposed to haunt the place become surrogate parents to Lydia and friends with Beetlejuice. The joke of learning how to be scary goes on for too long and their sappy-sweet connection with Lydia feels inauthentic. They carry some of the humour but could have been removed from the play with little consequence. The fault is in the storyline, not the actors themselves.
The show gets weirder and weirder, falling apart in the second act. Some of the boomer humour is outdated. No one’s dabbed since the 2010s, and Lydia’s soon-to-be stepmother’s life coach character feels passe. There’s heart in Lydia’s sadness, she feels abandoned by her father after her mother’s death, but her cries for attention and revenge seeking don’t have much behind them.
The show spirals into literal Hell. The Maitlands possess Charles and his paramour in a bizarre version of the Calypso “Day-O” banana song at a business dinner with investors. Lydia appears on stage in a red dress to be Beetlejuice’s child bride. BJ’s mother is the cranky smoking administrator at the entrance to the underworld. Through the second half of the show I felt like I was on the outside of a big inside joke and couldn’t follow what was happening and why. The stage design and effects made up for it, but the resolution at the end wasn’t satisfying.
From the first balcony of the Jubilee the acoustics were out of balance, with the vocals being lost to the overpowering instrumentals. I’ve experienced this at other shows and attribute it to the theatre itself. This combined with the chaotic craziness on stage left me relieved that it was soon to be over.
Then I wondered, am I the square, like the Maitlands? I think if I’d been a moody theatre kid in my teens, the show would resonate and be my gateway to Broadway fandom. As a tired, mid thirties mom, it just didn’t hit the way I hoped it would. It was fun, silly and something to see, if only for social currency amongst my younger dance friends. I’d go again for entertainment but not to be moved by deep, emotional storytelling. That’s simply not what Beetlejuice is. But the the actors were a pleasure to watch and the characters entertaining enough to carry the Tim Burton-inspired horror comedy.
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