Madeline Ashton is the most beautiful actress (just ask her) ever to grace the stage and screen. Helen Sharp is the long-suffering author (just ask her) who lives in her shadow. They have always been the best of frenemies…until Madeline steals Helen’s fiancé away. As Helen plots revenge and Madeline clings to her rapidly fading star, their world is suddenly turned upside down by Viola Van Horn, a mysterious woman with a secret that’s to die for.
After one sip of Viola’s magical potion, Madeline and Helen begin a new era of life (and death) with their youth and beauty restored…and a grudge to last eternity.
Starring Tony Award® nominees Megan Hilty (Wicked, “Smash”), Jennifer Simard (Company, Disaster!), and Christopher Sieber (Spamalot, Company), with Grammy® Award winner Michelle Williams (Destiny’s Child, Chicago), Death Becomes Her, based on the classic 1992 film, is a drop-dead hilarious new musical comedy about friendship, love, and burying the hatchet…again, and again, and again.
Life’s a bitch and then you die. Or not!
Marco Pennette’s book gives Hilty all the grand-dame one-liners, but it’s Simard who gets the more unexpected laughs with delightful line readings that take a second or two to register. The sharp dialogue is in perfect tune with Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s lyrics, and that duo’s music, which is merely serviceable, manages not to get in the way of the characters and the story, which Pennette has made far less convoluted than its source material.
This may be the one musical where you really might exit humming the set — but you’ll also remember the rapier-sharp repartee between Hilty and Simard, who lean into the material’s catty campiness with hilarious results. Simard’s Helen isn’t the only one who’s busting a gut at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. In addition, Hilty’s playfulness extends to her bio in the Playbill, where her credits are lifted directly from Streep’s résumé aside from a lone authentically Hilty TV credit, Smash, and the Streep-centric Instagram handle @ThisIsTotallyMegansRealBio. It’s a deft touch for a show that defies expectations in its all-out assault on the funny bone.
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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