Review: BEETLEJUICE IS THE GHOST WITH THE MOST at Auditorium Theatre

If theater critic and essayist Frank Rich already used it, I would have gladly crowned BEETLEJUICE,  now playing through Nov. 19th at the Auditorium Theatre, is “The Rasputin” of musicals. 

After all, the original Broadway production of the musical was savaged by critics and the production closed up shop on March 10, 2020 (two days before COVID forced all shows into a pandemic hibernation that theaters all over the country are still struggling to come back from.

But not BEETLEJUICE. The show reopened on Broadway in April 8, 2022 and eked out another 310 or so additional performances before closing in January of this year. 

While the Broadway show still closed with a loss, according to my BroadwayWorld colleague Stephi Wild, the national tour (which began in December of last year) recouped the original investment after just 37 weeks on the road. 

Locally, the lights had barely dimmed on the show’s first preview performance before Broadway in Chicago announced that due to demand, the show will play additional performances in May of next year.

I would say the moniker of “Rasputin” rightfully belongs to the green-tinged ghost-with-the-most except that Rasputin never had the fans the Beetlejuice appears to have. 

Not since the early days of “Wicked” have I seen so many patrons of the theater dressed as their favorite characters from the show. It added a cosplay carnival aspect to things preshow and during intermission. Shout out to the one drag queen with the fierce black and white dress complete with large bustle and train. I’m still wondering how you managed to fit in your seat!

While it remains to be seen if those donning costumes were doing it out of affinity for the original film or the Broadway show, the show is certain to win over the staunchest of those critics of musicals based on movies. The musical is a raunchy, riotous night of laugh-out-loud musical comedy.

Justin Collette’s Beetlejuice jumps and zips around the stage like a real-life Looney Tune character come to life. He constantly breaks the fourth wall, improvising jokes about the audience as much as delivering the ones in the script by Scott Brown and Anthony King. He displays so much energy throughout the entire performance that one wonders if the cocaine he sniffs off his arm early into the first act might actually be the real thing (producers assume me it’s not). When he sings in the opening number that he does this [show] like eight times a week, you don’t fully appreciate what a Herculean task that must really be.

That isn’t to say he is carrying the show that bears his name. As Lydia, newcomer Isabella Esler (making her professional stage debut in this shortly after graduating from high school) matches his comedic intensity with her own character’s own brand of literal black comedy (she wears black for most of the show). She has a “Wicked” set of powerful pipes (if you will indulge me a musical pun; her second act solo number “Home” blows the roof off the joint and immediately reminded me of another boffo flight of vocal prowess by a certain witch). 

The plot deviates just enough to keep things interesting while not alienating fans of the original 1988 film. Lydia Deetz  (Esler) is mourning the recent death of her mother when her real estate tycoon father Charles (Jesse Sharp who does the best with what amounts to an underwritten role) uproots her and his girlfriend/life coach Delia (Kate Marilley in a quirky and compelling supporting role) from New York to a Victorian farm house in Connecticut.

The place is still occupied by the spirits of the former owners Adam (Will Burton) and Barbara (Megan McGinnis), who met their fates at the hands of some faulty home wiring (darn those old homes).  Beetlejuice needs them to scare the new home’s owners, thereby saying his name three times and thus allowing him to once again be seen by all in the mortal realm. 

Unfortunately, both Adam and Barbara just aren’t any good the ghost part of haunting. And it isn’t until Mr. Juice realizes that Lydia can already see all the spirits that he hatches a plan to get her to say his name three times in a row. 

Adam and Barbara could easily become wallpaper in an overly-busy show (particularly with two high voltage performances by the show’s leads), but Burton and McGinnis command the stage when they are both on it. Burton’s Adam is the kind of guy who thinks he is not ready to be a father, but has stored up a lifetime of Dad Jokes he’ll now never use. As Barbara. McGinnis is the kind of woman who literally threw all of her maternal instinct into pottery and various other crafting projects and only discovers her maternal instinct in death. A typical, non-threatening suburban couple in life, in death they are the kind of spirits more likely to give you warm feelings then send chills up your spine. 

They are trapped and unable to move on more so because of the unfinished business of creating/finding a family of their own and not just because Beetlejuice burned their copy of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased before they could read about moving on. 

Both Burton and McGinnis are appropriately awkward and goofy when they need to be and despite the tornado of improvisational comedy whirling around them thanks to Collette’s manically funny Beetlejuice, both managed to hit their own comedic strides. Burton contorts his body like a ragdoll and McGinnis’ Barbara is a simmering tea kettle waiting to bubble over and when her character finally does in the second act (the delightful meltdown song “Barbara 2.0”), it is in some ways cathartic and very, very funny.

Australian comedian and composer Eddie Perfect’s music and lyrics are fine with “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing” and “Say My Name” being the most hummable (aside from the classic Harry Belafonte hit from the film “Day-O” which is here as service for fans of the original film). Perfect does seamlessly blend many of the show’s original tunes with the old standard at the end of the show with the medley “Jump in the Line”), but the climax of the show could use a few more special effects as it sort of falls flat

Still, you definitely want to say his name and purchase tickets. 

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