I suppose the first thing to say about Beetlejuice the Musical is that it’s not necessarily one for fans of the Tim Burton film.
Which doesn’t have to be a bad thing. A lazy criticism levelled at screen-to-stage adaptations is that they’re just works of formulaic transposition. But you only have to look at The Lion King – aka the highest-grossing musical in history – to see that’s blatantly not always the case. Aussie singer-songwriter Eddie Perfect’s all-singing take on the 1988 Burton classic is very definitely a retelling, taking most of the core elements of the supernatural comedy and positioning them together in a very different, very ’20s musical theatre way.
And for the sizeable number of audience members who turn up to the Prince Edward Theatre in fancy dress, that is enough. Alex Timbers’ production was a big Broadway hit and has a cast recording that has clearly begat legions of London fans. Many of them, I’m sure, regard the musical and its songs as the key text and have never even seen the film.
Alas, I am cursed with such knowledge, and despite my desire to be fair about the myriad alterations I can only really write this review from the POV of ‘grumpy old man who didn’t like how they changed things’.
To put it another way, I loved Burton’s surreal vision of a preposterously bureaucratic afterlife, and was dismayed that the whole concept is here reduced to a virtual Easter egg. As much as anything, it just feels a bit unambitious not to tackle it. Ditto the loss of anything like Michael Keaton’s deranged take on ‘freelance bio-exorcist’ Betelgeuse – the character has been almost unrecognisably reconfigured into a sort of fourth wall-breaking, meme-spouting, supernatural stand-up comedy douchebag (who isn’t even a bio-exorcist!).
That said, it kind of makes sense: Keaton’s Beetlejuice/Betelgeuse was actually only on screen for about 15 minutes. It’s understandable that the character needed to be given a dramatic overhaul to make him the lead of a full-length musical. A performance as batshit as Keaton’s probably couldn’t be sustained over a lengthy period of time.
David Fynn’s Betelgeuse greets us with an onslaught of meta-wisecracks and iffy pop cultural references
Here, David Fynn’s Betelgeuse is a mischievous spirit with foreknowledge of the imminent deaths of Barbara and Adam Maitland (Chelsea Halfpenny and David Hunter), whose house he’s been haunting (or at least lurking in) for some years. He’s the lead character from the off, greeting us with an onslaught of meta-wisecracks and iffy pop cultural references as he outlines the beginnings of his very convoluted scheme to gain a foothold in the human world via Lydia Deetz (Hannah Nordberg), the daughter of the family that buys the house after the Maitlands croak it.
The obvious strengths here lie in Fynn’s charismatic bad taste emceeing and Perfect’s brightly melodic, guitar-heavy tunes. On the whole, the dialogue – by Scott Brown and Anthony King – is better at being funny than sincere, and Perfect’s lyrics are better at being sincere than funny: jokes are laboured to the point of exhaustion, but there are some banging ballads.
David Korins’ sets and Peter Nigrini’s projections offer the biggest nod to Burton. And if it never feels like the eye-popping spectacle Timbers’ Moulin Rouge! was, it undeniably looks good within its limits of barely leaving the Maitlands’ house. The iconic sandworm gets a look in. There are cameos for the film’s afterlife caseworker, Juno, and the shrunken-headed Harry the Hunter. ‘The Banana Boat Song’ happens. But really this is a new story, which focuses on Betelgeuse’s attempts to become human, twinned with Lydia’s grief-fuelled teenage rebellion. Youngster Nordberg looks great as Lydia and can really sing, although she markedly lacks Winona Ryder’s sullen charisma (part of the issue probably being that Ryder didn’t have to sing songs all the time).
So I can see why you might like it… but I didn’t. It’s not so much that Perfect and Timbers have changed stuff, more that there seems to be a genuine lack of appreciation for the source material. It’s much less surreal and imaginative and struggles to maintain a coherent tone: is it a bad-taste comedy with a fairly heavy Family Guy influence? Or is it a heartwarming story about a daughter reconciling with her dad, in which everyone learns and grows? It tries to be both and ends up feeling increasingly leaden-footed as it lumbers towards a mawkish finale.
For me the issues with the tinkering are exemplified by Betelgeuse’s loud aside to the audience that the Maitlands are the real villains. In the film that’s certainly true! But here they’re just helpless patsies whose journey has been weirdly reconfigured into a sort of Rocky Horror Show-lite. The clever aside doesn’t work because the satire about snobbish homeowners has been tinkered out of the story.
The other moment that stuck with me was when Fynn’s Betelgeuse makes a series of coarse jokes about Paddington the Musical. I won’t deny I laughed, but also what the hell was that about? Why is Betelgeuse saying this stuff other than as a wink to theatre kids? What does it mean that he seems to know he’s in a musical?
Ultimately it has nice sets, nice ballads and if you like aggressively knowing 21st century Broadway humour you’ll have fun. I get what they’ve done and why people like it. But it sells the source material very short.
Beetlejuice the Musical is at the Prince Edward Theatre, now until Apr 17 2027. Book tickets here.
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