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!
The momentum during the two-hour and 30-minute runtime also does stall somewhat in the second act — perhaps gently reminding audiences that indeed not everything should last, or take, forever — yet eventually recovers with a welcomely recrafted ending. The new finish may lack the side- (and arm- and leg- and head-) splitting gag of the film, but offers a touching and terrifically funny send-off to our tragic love triangle of doom. Madeline and Helen may have faked their deaths, but we’ll doubtlessly see them again. After all, the only thing more eternal than these brawling broads is the intellectual property that birthed them. Grade: B
“Death Becomes Her,” a stylishly macabre Broadway musical comedy about a love/hate triangle, has much the same plot, catty repartee, and even some of the same comically gruesome special effects as the 1992 Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn/Bruce Willis movie on which it is based. Although not as starry a draw as their cinematic predecessors, Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard and Christopher Sieber — all Broadway favorites — do a fine job in the principal roles, and there are several memorable supporting players. But if I’m being honest, one theater artist stood out for me: Paul Tazewell, the costume designer.
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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