Interview: Jesse Sharp on Bringing BEETLEJUICE to the Orpheum Theater

BroadwayWorld sat down with Jessee Sharp of the Beetlejuice tour ahead of the show's visit to Omaha! 

Based on Tim Burton's dearly beloved film, BEETLEJUICE tells the story of Lydia Deetz, a strange and unusual teenager whose life changes when she meets a recently deceased couple and Beetlejuice, a demon with a thing for stripes. When Lydia calls on Beetlejuice to scare away anyone with a pulse, this double-crossing specter unleashes a (Nether)world of pandemonium in this remarkably touching show about family, love and making the most of every Day-O!

BEETLEJUICE is directed by Tony Award winner Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!, Here Lies Love) with an original score by Tony Award nominee Eddie Perfect (King Kong); a book by Tony Award nominee Scott Brown (Gutenberg: The Musical) and Tony and Emmy Award nominee Anthony King (Gutenberg: The Musical); music supervision, orchestrations and incidental music by Kris Kukul (Joan of Arc: Into the Fire); and choreography by Connor Gallagher (The Robber Bridegroom).

BEETLEJUICE features scenic design by three-time Tony Award nominee David Korins (Hamilton); costume design by six-time Tony Award winner William Ivey Long (The Producers); lighting design by Tony Award winner Kenneth Posner (Kinky Boots); sound design by Tony Award winner Peter Hylenski (Moulin Rouge!); projection design by Tony Award nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Peter Nigrini (Dear Evan Hansen); puppet design by Drama Desk Award winner Michael Curry (The Lion King); special effects design by Jeremy Chernick (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child); special effects design by Michael Weber (Forrest Gump); hair & wig design by Drama Desk Award nominee Charles G. LaPointe; make-up design by Joe Dulude II; physical movement coordinator Lorenzo Pisoni; additional arrangements by Eddie Perfect and Kris Kukul; music producing by Tony Award winner Matt Stine; music coordination by Kristy Norter; dance arrangements by David Dabbon; associate director is Catie Davis and associate choreographer is Michael Fatica; line producer is Jenny Gersten; casting by The Telsey Office.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with BroadwayWorld in Omaha.

Thank you!

I always like to start at the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about how you found your love for the arts and your journey to a career on stage?

I was interested in the arts from a very young age actually. I grew up outside of Los Angeles, kind of in a rural mountain area of Southern California, but our big city was LA. We had lots of people who lived in our town who worked in Hollywood. We had scene painters and union contractors, so a lot of my friends parents worked in and around show business. I remember being five or six years old and just being fascinated with the entertainment industry. For me, it was movies and television first. I think I knew by the time I knew what an actor was that I wanted to be an actor. That kind of evolved a little bit into wanting to be a filmmaker. It was always film, television, and sort of screen stuff early on. I want to say in seventh grade when we started doing electives they had a drama class, and so I decided to take the drama class. And that’s when I really started doing theatre. In junior high, I did theatre school and I did community theatre, and then in high school I actually started doing musicals. I had started out really wanting to be a screen actor but I became a theatre kid as time went on. Eventually I studied theatre in school. I went to LA and started my professional career while finishing school. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in theatre, but was also auditioning professionally. I kind of rode the wild ride of being an auditioning actor, and I ended up in New York as a professional musical theater actor. I think the main thing for me was always just wanting to perform and say yes to any opportunities that came to me. The last few years have just been a lot of really great national and international tours and regional theatre. I’ve played Omaha before, and I love Omaha! We stopped there with The Addams Family maybe ten years ago. So it’s kind of been a winding path but it’s always been what I wanted to do with my life.

You have experience as an actor, both on stage and in front of the camera. How do you approach bringing a character to life on screen vs on stage?

You know, working on camera is such a different thing but also it comes from the same place which is that you want to tell the truth. You want to express the truth that the writer has given you, if that makes any sense. I really appreciate writing. The writing on Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is incredibly different than the writing on Blue Bloods. As an actor, I think it’s my job to know the tone and what the writer is really after. It’s really the same thing in theatre. The tone of Beetlejuice is different from the tone of Company. If you’re doing a very contemporary piece, it’s more about realistic acting and singing, and something like Beetlejuice is a little more stylized. I guess I’ve sort of always felt like my job was to execute the piece that the writer has given me. So when it comes to television and film, I honestly don’t have a different process other than I know what the expectations are from the script and sort of what the behavior is that that writer is asking for. Really, just do what the writer tells you. I don’t mean for that to be a flippant answer, but I think if you really spend some time with material, you know. And when I say writer, I mean that kind of generically because when you get in a musical theatre, there are lots of writers. In theatre there’s the book writer and the designers. Beetlejuice is so designed that when you step into that world, you sort of have to play in the world that the designers, including the lighting designers and sound designers, have created for you. I guess that’s the main thing about my process is paying very close attention to what my responsibility is in the collaboration.

You have been a part of multiple nationally touring productions. What has been the best part of touring and what is the hardest part?

I think the best part is that I’ve been to pretty much every big city in the country. I mean, there’s food and coffee shops and museums, and all the things you would do as a tourist. If you had a friend coming to Omaha, you would tell them they needed to check out different places. We’ve been to the Omaha Zoo before! Twenty years ago I was a really big Bright Eyes fan so I had to go to the Saddle Creek store. I always have a couple destinations or restaurants I really like, so that’s the best part. The hard part is the actual travel. You know, when we travel on Mondays, whether we’re driving or flying, that’s the real grind just getting from place to place. I’m sure you know as well as anybody that travel in 2024 is not pleasant. Airports and truck stops… You name it. But being in interesting cities with new audiences is the thrill of it. Getting to experience a week or two or three in a really cool town is something I still really like after all these years.

You have toured many times with your wife, who is also a performer. What is that like and what advice for those with partners in the arts?

I think you have to evolve what home means to you. I think for Lexi and I, home is where the other one is. We drive the tour. We have a car that we drive on nearly every city and we travel with our little dog, Chip, who is a 9 pound chihuahua dachshund mix and who has lived most of his life on the road. We kind of pack up our whole life and then put it in our little bronco sport and get on the road. It really is just that the idea of home has changed over time. We have a great apartment in New York and we do have a life together outside of tour, but I think we try as much as possible to each other’s home in all of these places. And Lexi and I have the same agent, so we can pitch each other for things if there’s something that one of us really wants to do or is right for. We do have those conversations. But in Beetlejuice, we have at least four traveling couples that I can think of. So it’s fun. It definitely helps keep it from feeling too lonely.

Can you tell me a little about your audition experience for Beetlejuice?

The first step was a tape. I got a tape request specifically for Charles on the tour. I think the tape request came through in April 2022? I did two scenes and then I think I just sang a cut from my audition book. I got an in-person callback possibly three weeks later, and I went into the city for that. I say into the city because I was doing regional theatre in upstate New York. That’s how that always works where you’re out of town you have to go back in town to audition for something. I did that and came back and opened the show I was doing at the time. I was doing Catch Me if You Can at a theater called The REV, which is a great regional theatre. I then had a final callback for Alex Timbers, and it was the day after opening night. There were no rental cars available in this little town called Auburn, and I had to get to Syracuse. I had to get someone to drive me to Syracuse at the crack of dawn so I could get the car to New York City to audition for Alex Timbers and get back and do our second show. It’s a typical audition story really. There’s a lot of self tapes involved and then you typically go in person. When I had a callback for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel I had an audition on Zoom for the writers. It’s a real combination now of in-person and virtual opportunities.

Tell me a little about your character, Charles.

The first thing I will say is that this musical is very different from the movie. Charles is a real estate guy. He’s a land developer. I think of Charles is sort of an artist in a way because he really has a very specific sense of style and taste, which you do get from the movie as well, but he has a real vision for what he wants this little community to be. Really, he has a very specific vision of how he wants his life to feel. So he’s dealing with grief and the loss of his wife Emily and trying to figure out how he’s going to be raising a teenage daughter. In our show he turns to Delia, and Delia starts the show as his new girlfriend. He proposes to her, so the plot is a bit different from the movie, but that’s the gist. On a deeper level, he’s a guy who doesn’t fundamentally know how to deal with grief and doesn’t feel like he has time to deal with grief. And I think that’s a really interesting thing that happens in our show that is so over-the-top and wacky. There’s something about the Charles and Lydia relationship that so many parents find they can connect with. When you’re a kid you think your parents know everything and they have everything together, and then you become an adult and you realize that they don’t and they’re just winging it the whole time. I think Charles is winging it and his daughter doesn’t want to let go of her mother, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to handle it. That’s the part of him that is very human and it’s the part I like to play the most. There’s sort of an over the top and design minded, wacky Tim Burton character, and then there’s this very flawed character just trying to figure out how to get through the day.

I do want to say that I think that while there are differences that this is what a movie musical adaptation should be. It definitely honors everything that people love about the movie, but it is absolutely its own thing.

Do you have a favorite part of the show?

I have an amazing scene with Lydia in act two where, not to give too many spoilers, they resolve some of the tension that they’ve been going through throughout the play. The scene is written beautifully, and it’s a wonderful moment of quiet in a very big, over-the-top musical. I love that scene every night. My costar, Isabella Esler, who plays Lydia is just terrific. She is such a gifted natural actor, and I get to do this amazing scene with a really brilliant young performer, and that’s in addition to all the amazing jokes! It’s a fun job and a fun show to do every night, and it’s also artistically satisfying and there’s a lot of heart to it.

What can Omaha fans expect from the show?

They can expect to have a good time! It is a really, really fun night of theatre. If there are some people who really don’t know the movie and they don’t really know if it’s just for Halloween or if it’s a horror show, it’s a really fun musical comedy. There’s moments of heart. There’s lots of different things going on, but at the end of the day our audiences laugh like no other show I’ve ever done. It’s so funny and the music is amazing. You should definitely check it out.

Photo Credit: Matthew Murphy

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