Review: Beetlejuice the Musical a wild comic ride

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If you ignore the giant sandworms, the ghosts, and the looming spectre of death, Beetlejuice the Musical is really about moms.

Now, your mom might be a hell-spawned demon intent on murder, and mine might be nurturing and kind, but they’re both significant in our lives. That’s what links the anarchic title character and the protagonist, Lydia, a black clad teen still mourning the untimely passing of her mother. Well, that and a shared penchant for scaring girl guides with heart problems.

Beetlejuice the Musical is a slight deviation from Tim Burton’s 1988 film, with adjustments made so that the creators could pull out themes of family and alienation. If you haven’t seen the movie, here’s the bare bones premise: Lydia and her parents move into the Victorian home once occupied by the Maitlands, a husband and wife who are now ghosts sulking in the attic because of the newcomers. Beetlejuice appears and offers to help the Maitlands scare off the new occupants.

There’s always a caveat when it comes to offers from the underworld, and for Beetlejuice it’s this: he needs a living person to say his name three times so that he can appear and wreak total havoc around him. The results are a little less dire than if you do the same with The Candyman or Bloody Mary, but still horrendous. Turns out that Lydia is more than willing to do the deed, setting loose the striped spirit in a fit of frustration. Chaos ensues!

The film is like a Looney Tunes cartoon amped up on Red Bull, the musical a little less so though Justin Collette does a fine job of filling Michael Keaton’s shoes as the ungovernable spirit. He might be a malicious entity with lustful designs on every living human and ghost in the room, but he also has his sensitive side, singing Invisible in his cracked voice at the top of the house. Who knew that an avatar of mayhem could be wounded by exclusion?

Lydia also feels invisible, as does Delia (Lexie Dorsett Sharp), the life coach hired by Lydia’s (Madison Mosley) father Charles (Jesse Sharp) to help Lydia through her grief. The Maitlands? Adam (Will Burton) and Barbara (Katie Griffith) are also not being listened to. Hell, you could even make a case for Juno (Maria Sylvia Norris), simply a case worker in the film but Beetlejuice’s tyrannical mistress of the nether regions for the musical, as simply being a misunderstood single parent. Group hug, everyone? Maybe not after the chipper but unsettling tune Creepy Old Guy, where Lydia and friends attempt to fool Beetlejuice into thinking that everyone loves him so they can send him back to the burning fires below. So much for inclusion!

If you’re a fan of the original film you’ll enjoy Beetlejuice the Musical, but it’s also very clearly designed for the theatre, and musical theatre kids in particular. You want clever lyrics? You’ve got clever lyrics, enough to send the audience at Tuesday night’s sold-out performance into gales of laughter multiple times. Multiple musical genres bleed into each other; show tunes, rock, jazz, reggae, and of course calypso. You think they’d leave out the most famous musical set piece in the film? As the teens like to say, if you know, you know.

Last but not least, even if you’re not particularly a fan of musical theatre you’ll still likely be blown away by the phenomenal set design and lighting work in the show. The house morphs impressively from elegant Victorian to hellish nightmare, puppets both big and small nod back to Tim Burton’s claymation work, walls shift and open into a smoke-filled limbo. Kudos to whoever has to quickly move set elements around to make it look like there are at least six distinct locations. Beetlejuice the Musical looks amazing, boasts a crack band capable of whipping around genres with ease, and snaps along with glee, like a slowly melting Harry Belafonte 45 played at 78 rpm.

To quote the original, they’ve turned on the juice to see what shakes loose, and what has shaken loose is fine indeed.

Beetlejuice the Musical

When: until Jan. 19

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

Tickets: $75 and up, available in advance from jubileeauditorium.com

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