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Very soon after Beetlejuice the musical first premiered on stage, it became an online viral sensation. It has become hugely popular in the musical theatre Internet community. It has played three distinct Broadway runs at three separate Broadway theatres. And finally, after years of anticipation, it has transferred to London's West End where it opened tonight at the Prince Edward Theatre. And having been a part of that audience and having now seen the show on either side of the Atlantic, I am going to, for the very first time, tell you exactly what I think of Beetlejuice. Oh my God. Hey, welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. If you're meeting me for the first time, my name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre, hence Mickey Jo Theatre. If you say that three times, then I appear magically behind you and start critiquing your life. I hope for your sake it has tap numbers. I am a professional theater critic and a content creator here on social media and this evening I headed to the opening night of the of Beetlejuice at the Prince Edward Theatre in London, a hugely anticipated West End arrival. This is the number one show that fans seem to have been waiting for for years now. Prior to that it was Mean Girls. Now that this one has finally come, the next one seems to be Death Becomes her that people are really manifesting. Only I guess when Western musical theater fans were saying the name of the show three times in order to try and really make it happen, what they failed to specify was not the touring version, not the touring version, not the touring version. Because there is some unfortunate history of a show opening on Broadway with lavish impressive set and then going on a US tour and possibly scaling down in the process and then bringing that reduced version of the show to the West End. Of course, as well as talking about this specific production of Beetlejuice and how it might differ to the original and how that affects the performance. We also have to talk about the material, about these songs, about the performances from this, the original West End company. Stay tuned for all of my thoughts about this show and as always, please share yours in the comments down below. Have you had the chance to see Beetlejuice in the West End yet? As always, if you enjoy my review and you would like to hear more of them, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on notifications so that YouTube lets you know every time I post a new video or follow me on podcast platforms where you can enjoy much of the same long winded conversational content. But without the snazzy themed Beetlejuice shirt. Look at this one. I've been playing the long game with this garment because I ask you, where else am I going to wear it? Anyway, tonight it was finally time. Beetlejuice is at last open in London and I was there and I'm going to tell you all about it. So I am going to talk about about the material, but I want to zoom out a little bit here and talk about the production that has come to the West End and that in the context of the history of the show. Because Beetlejuice has had financial challenges on Broadway every time that it has played there. And there has been something of a discrepancy between the online fan response to this show and its extraordinary TikTok virality and its ongoing popularity in modern musical theater fandom. A discrepancy between that and what actually seems to happen at the box office. The original production at the Winter Garden Theatre, just as it was beginning to gain momentum, was ousted for a Scott Rudin produced revival of the Music Man. It subsequently came back, it went to the marquee, but it didn't really manage to find its groove. Then most recently, the scaled down US Tour production did something of a midtown Manhattan tour stop. This was my first opportunity to see the show at the Palace Theatre and per the proud history of Broadway to West End transfers, that is the production and that that is the set that has arrived at the very large Prince Edward Theatre in London, which is obviously to some degree disappointing. You hate to see West End musical theatre fans consistently getting a reduced, cheaper version. However, I think we have to acknowledge that this is potentially the smart thing to do in light of the financial history of Beetlejuice. While you could be in awe of the popularity that it seems to have and the enthusiasm that fans had when it got announced, it has never been able to make money online Broadway. We can't yet anticipate that the West End will be any different. Often some of these musicals based on films do a little better in London, but even the highly anticipated Mean Girls didn't stick around for as long as people might have thought that it would. What's also interesting is that the London run of Beetlejuice is not open ended. It is playing at the Prince Edward Theatre for a finite amount of time. Very possibly it will go on to tour potentially with the same set subsequently. And since I keep talking about this set, let's unusually make that the very first detail of this review. It has been designed by David Coryns and we move between different rooms of a house. One which can be found in a quaint Connecticut community initially inhabited by Adam and Barbara Maitland, who are imminently about to die. Upon their death, the house is sold to the Dietz family, who are at this time father Charles, daughter Lydia, and Lydia's life coach. Live in life coach. It seems Delia, this family is also well acquainted with mortality. Charles's wife and Lydia's mother having recently passed away. This being the opening scene of the show, a sort of a gothic funeral before we meet Beetlejuice. But I'll tell you more about about that momentarily. We are in this house, which is thrice throughout the show redesigned in various different styles. And we venture up to the attic, to the roof. We even at one point journey to the Netherworld. And it does a good job of filling out the Prince Edward stage. The overwhelming aesthetic of this set design by David Corins is these kind of skewif and slanted warped versions of perspective achieved in the walls in a lowered ceiling, in sort of echoing versions of ever smaller proscenium arch extending backwards. When we go to the Netherworld late in the second act, it's this sort of hollow and everlasting echo of slanted squares. Like that moment in a haircut when they hold up a mirror behind you and you feel like you can see into eternity. Unless that's just a personal thought that I have, which isn't as relatable as I suspected it was. And this is the only version of the Beetlejuice set that I have ever seen in person. I am told that previously it used to do more impressive things, that at the beginning, when Adam and Barbara met their demise, they fell through the floor. And there were a lot of really cool things that achieved by this set. Nowadays, there being no trapdoor, they simply electrocute themselves accidentally instead. And honestly, I don't have much of an issue with a reduction of the set. I think it all works well enough. And it doesn't need to be a show that leans on scale and spectacle. I think the sung material especially is strong enough. The problem that I have with this production is the reliance on lowering a curtain in front of it. And not just death becomes her style to kind of raise it at different points. There are a couple of bedroom scenes that use only half of the stage. And so we have half curtain and half knot with a little bit of ruching to reveal an area behind them. But it's the number of scene transitions in which a curtain is fully lowered. And we get this repetitive projection of Leaves blowing off of a tree spookily while the curtain is lowered for a conspicuous amount of time. Often performers will have moved towards the front of the stage to finish their big song to sing the last verse so that the set can be changed behind them. It's an old school theater trick and one that we don't see an awful lot of in modern productions because we figured out how to avoid this. And it's both a set design thing and a direction thing. This production has been directed by Alex Timbers, and it's the conspicuous scene change moments that I don't particularly enjoy. These sort of protracted moments of waiting for the next thing to happen. Those pauses and those gaps and those moments of anticipation aren't a friend to comedy. And that's what Beetlejuice is trying to be. This is a musical comedy. I will say, I think Kenneth Posner's lighting design and Peter Negrini's projection design. There's a lot of projection mapping going on over the various composite pieces of this house. Do an awful lot to upscale the production and those static moments and to really sell the otherworldly quality as well as to instill an initial atmosphere when we're arriving into the auditorium. And it's these vivid purples and greens. And the aesthetic throughout every level of this production, as well as its marketing and its brand identity, is a somewhat whimsical combination of spooky and cartoonish. That's in the costume design by William Ivy Long. Also the makeup design by Joe Delude the iii. And the brilliantly expressive and characterful wig and hair design by Charles G. Lapointe. All of the character costuming and design in Beetlejuice is terrific for Beetlejuice himself, but also for the various otherworldly characters that they encounter when we go to the netherworld and we meet the other recently deceased. And their costuming and their styling is indicative of the manner in which they died. It's absolutely brilliant. Incorporated within that are the efforts of a few more members of this large creative team. Michael Curry's puppetry design has a few brilliant mom moments. Jeremy Chernick is credited with special effects design and Michael Webber with magic and illusion design. All of this an important part in telling the sprawling story of Beetlejuice, wrangled, I think, ultimately very well by Alex Timbers. There has been some interesting transposition from the film to the stage musical. Tonally, it has kind of shifted into a very different thing. Less bleak, less morbid, more campy, more colorful. And we'll talk about the material in just A moment and how Beetlejuice finds its theatrical identity. But in terms of the comedic pace, scene transitions notwithstanding, I think Alex Timbers has done a great job. But there are some really fantastic numbers in terms of just like giving you good musical theater. There are great solo moments, there are stirring duet moments, and there are a handful of really terrific high energy company numbers which brilliantly showcase Conor Gallagher's work as a choreographer. Never more so than in the Act 2 opening number, that beautiful sound, or I guess the second number in the second act, right after Girl Scout. And it is, I can only assume, a very fun series of characters and a fun world in which to try and discern a dance language and a movement language, because it is like every other aspect of the show, playful and a little nefarious and odd. This, I think, is one of those stories and shows where if you zoom out on the entire concept, it's actually wildly impressive that it is as cohesive and commercial as it has become. And I credit Alex Timbers with an awful lot of that. But we also have to talk about the writing of Beetlejuice as amus musical, which is what we're going to chat about next. So like I said, we have gone on something of a journey from the original Tim Burton film to the version that is appearing on stage, and a journey that I think is necessary in terms of where Beetlejuice lives tonally as a slightly campy, very cartoonish comedy musical that's a little self referential and full of cultural references and breaks its own fourth wall almost immediate, immediately. I think it owes a lot to predecessors like Monty Python's Spamalot, but also the abrupt, juvenile irreverence of the Book of Mormon, as well as the sort of spooky camp balance of the Addams Family. A musical which I believe was, when it arrived on Broadway ahead of its time, Beetlejuice also was kind of just beginning to come in the right moment. Shows like Death Becomes her have benefited from the work that they have done subsequently, even though that is now also closing early. And in terms of how Beetlejuice makes the journey to musical theater, it utilizes the character himself, who immediately arrives and breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience in a number called the Whole Being Dead Thing, in which the ensemble repeatedly remind us, through song, of course, that this is a show about death. And it is, but only in a very musical theater way where we never really feel the imminent consequence and gravity of death as a concept, especially because we meet all of these characters before and after their death in many cases. And it doesn't seem to really change anything about our relationship to them. We, the Maitlands, actually die on stage and then jump right back up and continue to be their same charming, slightly anxious selves. And on that note, and this may be a good moment for me to expand on the plot a little bit, for those of you who don't know what Beetlejuice is about. When he's introduced himself to us, the audience, he has explained that he longs to participate more in the world, but that humans cannot see him. And so he tries to trick two recently deceased individuals by keeping from them them information that should have been made available about their journey to the netherworld, into helping him haunt this house, to evict its new residents and try and coerce them into saying his name three times, which will sort of invoke and summon him and afford him greater power. Ultimately, he unexpectedly finds that Lydia, who has already met these two ghosts and is the only one who can see them, can also see him, Perhaps because she herself is well acquainted with the strange and unusual. She is also utterly grief stricken in mourning for her mother brother, whose death her father never seems to want to discuss. As such, there is a clever parallel here that they invoke multiple times in various lyrics, with Lydia and Beetlejuice both feeling invisible. She, because her grief is seen as problematic in her own home, Delia has been brought in as this very dubious life coach to try and just push Lydia's sorrow and depression and grief into a little box in the corner. Beetlejuice literally can't be seen by members of the human race, so there is some kinship immediately between the two of them, even if they don't get off to the best start. There's also some specificity in terms of the longing that they have to hear names spoken aloud. Beetlejuice needs to hear his own name spoken three times. He has a song called say My Name, in which he tries to convince Lydia to do this so that he might help her to terrify her father and convince him to leave the house. She becomes concerned that her mother might still exist as a ghost in their own home that they have moved out of. So, understandably, she's eager to go back there. But she also pleads with her father to acknowledge her late mother, his late wife, and say her name. And you may be thinking that none of this necessarily lends itself in an obvious way to musical theater. The songs that have been written for this, written by Eddie Perfect, have no business being this great. Beetlejuice has an absolutely fantastic score as I'm sure many people have already been made aware, Eddie Perfect has found distinct voices and color and character for all of these frenetic and frenzied personalities. For Lydia and how sardonic she is for Beetlejuice himself, a personality I'll tell you more about in just a moment. For Delia and her eccentricity, even the Latin flavor of the song. What I Know Now, A company number of Regretful Demise fronted by the late Miss Argentina. And I'll walk you through a few of the highlights, but it's one of those rare scores that has almost no excess weight or skip tracks up there with the best. Lydia sings a song in the first act called Dead Mom. Chances are you've heard it already. It is rightfully in the pantheon of, like, the best standalone musical theatre solos. I want songs of the past decade. It also sneaks up on me every single time. What a fantastic song Barbara 2.0 is. When we get into the second act, I really love the orchestrations and arrangements throughout the score, like I said, lending character to each of them. Let me tell you who is responsible for these. Chris Kakul is credited as music supervisor, orchestrations and incidental music, the ones which we need for all those scene changes. I promise I'll stop talking about it when I want to. David Dabon is credited with the dance arrangements. Also. Very strong, fantastic company numbers. Creepy Old Guy. You get into that song, it's towards the very end of the show. We've already had what felt like the 11 o' clock number. Creepy old Guy is not the finale. And you go, man, this is also just a really great song. And then the actual finale is this joyous culmination of brilliant composition and arrangement when a Harry Belafonte song, Shake, Shake, Shake Sonora, of course, included in the show because of the iconic moment on screen when the characters at a dinner party are possessed and all sing Daylight Calm Man, Me Wanna Go Home Dayo, the Banana Boat song, Harry Belafonte. But the way that the Dead mom melody gets reprised in the midst of Sheik Sonora is so fantastic. It's such a triumphant musical moment. I would very much like for Eddie Perfect to write another musical theatre score, actually, because this is great. And the book, which has been written by Scott Brown and Anthony King, retains the same comic sensibility, the same sense of humor. The masterstroke of it, I think, is to utilize Beetlejuice as this sort of stand up comedian, theatrical narrator kind of a character, and to figure him out tonally is to figure out the rest of the show by extension. And he is this immediately fourth wall shattering showman who can deliver anachronistic cultural references which here in the UK now newly include BBC Radio 2 and frequent jabs at Paddington the Bear and the Musical. But he is also, in spite of existing somewhere ambiguous between anti heroism and legitimate villainy, inherently likable and non intimidating. I would characterize him as a sexually aggressive nightma with the energy of a standup at like a budget holiday park. Meanwhile, we are for the most part doing character comedy, but we do also have some actual themes in the undercurrents. Here we are talking about grief and they managed to land a sort of substantial enough emotional resolution between Lydia and her father eventually, even if it's a very hurried one. In the midst of this utterly hasty rushed trip to the netherworld in which Lydia is utterly determined to run into hell in order to make some kind of contact with her mother, she is subsequently chased around and finds herself in this place of emptiness where prompted by absolutely nothing and with no reason to not continue running away from the dead people who are trying to also kill her, she sings a song in which she basically changes her mind. But we also don't really care because at this point, for the duration of their whistle stop tour of the afterlife, we haven't seen Beetlejuice and that is when we're having the most fun. So let's finish then by talking about him and the rest of the performances of this West End cast. Now there was so much speculation about who was going to play Beetlejuice himself. When the show finally came here and people were talking about Simon Lipkin and Jack Malone, one of the other names that was being thrown around was David Finns, who is now wearing that iconic strike striped suit and green wig. And there will be very little comparison here for musical theatre fans at least with Michael Keaton who played the role on screen. All of the comparison instead is going to be with the original stage star Alex Brightman, currently starring on Broadway in Schmigadoon. And the main reason why this casting was anticipated is because this isn't the first role that the two of them have shared. David was also Dewey Finn in School of Rock the Musical at the Gillian Lynn. One of the things that Alex Brightman was able to do that made his performance immediately iconic was this very int gravelly vocal affectation. He found a safe way in order to do that. And evidently that isn't necessarily something that many performers are going to be able to replicate. Arguably it's also not something that they need to in order to portray this character. It would be naive, though, to suggest there isn't some level of expectation. And I think by the end of David's performance as Beetlejuice, you forget that it isn't there. I do think performers deserve the freedom beyond a very specific set of criteria and a very specific kind of expectation. I recently had the chance to sit down with a podcast of Avenue Q and talk about this very thing and playing a character versus trying to do an imitation. However, at the same time, we also spoke about the fact that, like, if you can't do the Trekkie monster voice, you simply don't bother auditioning for the show. And what I struggled with a little with David's performance, more so than the lack of gravel and grit in the vocal, was something of a lack of energy. And it's tricky with Beetlejuice because he is deliberately kind of casual. It's there in the lyric, it's there in the characterization. But his sort of obnox interest and like, this guy knows what I'm talking about kind of vibe needs to be combined with some level of spark. Worth saying, when I talk about all of these performances, I think they're all going to continue to get better over the coming weeks because wildly, Beetlejuice in the West End has only had about one week of preview performances. Everything that I saw this evening is still very fresh and they're still finding their feet. But there is this quality of his vocal delivery that right now is feeling a little heavy. The tonality is tilting ever so slightly flat, and he sounded a little vocally fatigued in some of the higher parts of the score. There are also some moments that would benefit from more energy in the physicality. When he rises up through the dining table in the midst of this Harry Belafonte possession, and his name is uttered thrice by Lydia. There's this huge lighting and sound moment before he very delicately steps down off of the table via a chair. And it just kind of undercuts the electricity of his return to the stage. I don't know that he's yet found a way to balance the excitement of the character and the energy that he has to inject with his sort of a Seth MacFarlane kind of a comedy vibe. And it's that sort of a character that he's sounding like right now as well. He sort of sounds like a random Californian side character in American Dad. He is charismatic enough. He is inexplicably lovable enough. I buy into the unlikely friendship that is earned by the end between him and Lydia. But I want him to find more of a sense of gleeful mania. And he's responsible for an awful lot of the energy of the production because you come to realize that Adam and Barbara, though they are sort of awakened to the possibility of the people who they could become even after death, are stereotypically square and suburban and conservative. Lydia is sardonic and moody and edgy. Everyone else is pretty normal. Delia is a nutjob, but for the most part, it's just her and Beetlejuice. And they have to carry this eccentricity and this wild energy themselves because they're the only people who can liven the whole thing up. Speaking of Delia skipping over Lydia momentarily, this is a character played, of course, on screen by Catherine o', Hara, who can really run away with the show because she has some fantastic material. And when Amy Atkinson was announced for this, I was initially a little surprised because I thought she would read a little young for it. But she is so convincing in this role, and there's a real musicality to her comedic delivery. She gets the cadence and flow of every single joke. Right. I think there is room for her to be even more energetic, for her to. To make it even bigger, but also to be a little more weird about it. Delia is this beautifully unhinged character who is trying to coach Lydia through this depressive episode and who, we come to find out, has a wild and elaborate backstory of her own. And it's sort of this tragic figure. There's a comedy to it, but has evidently, like, made a series of dreadful, gullible choices in her life. I think there's a level of oddity and damage you can lean all the way into with Delia. But I thought Amy was very funny, one of the highlights in the company, and sounded sensational. The score sits very well in her voice. The late Maitlands. Meanwhile, Adam and Barbara are played by David Hunter and Chelsea Halfpenny, reuniting on stage since the two of them toured together in Waitress. And they are perfect on arrival. They are so charmingly characterized. They are just enough of a send up. Brilliant vocals, a lovely arc for each of them as they come to terms with really accepting and reinventing their identities in the second act. Chelsea Halfpenny has always done a fantastic job of music, rounding a feisty, newly empowered corner. And David Hunter is utterly hilarious on stage and is the perfect musical theater dad. I like this era that he's moving into. I think it suits him brilliantly. Now back to Lydia, Hannah Nordberg is actually an American actress taking on the role as part of the original West End cast. Sounds absolutely fantastic and this is something of a monster of a sing. Dead Mom Alone is a very challenging song to get through. She does sensationally in this show, but the portrayal of Lydia throughout is sort of note perfect, pitch perfect. It's absolutely what you expect from this character and she grounds the emotional journey of the show throughout. Beetlejuice gets to come on and have fun and bring the comedy and raise our energy levels, but there is no sense of a story without Lydia as its anchor the entire time and she has this complex adolescent chasm of sorrow and resentment that builds towards a really lovely conclusion inclusion. Otherwise, I have to say the highlight performances in this company come from individuals who are basically coming on to do little cameo moments. Chasity Crisp is multi rolling as a couple of characters, but when she plays Maxine Dean, the fifth wife of the mogul Maxi Dean, whose personality is as a result of getting kicked in the head by a dressage horse, a character I saw on Broadway played by Trisha Paytas, she in very few lines really brings the goods. Richard Frame has an absolutely fantastic five minutes as the guru Otho, who in this production newly has a British accent, but quite possibly MVP of the Whole Damn Thing is Vanessa aurora Sierra as Ms. Argentina. Now originally when the show was first on Broadway, this character was part of the Delia Deetz track and Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer as the original Broadway cast member, played both characters in a sort of a Ms. Gulch in the wizard of Oz into the Wicked Witch of the west kind of an idea. Ultimately they decided that it wasn't really necessary when the show returned beyond the 2020 shutdown. And this is not actually the first time I have seen Vanessa Aurora Sierra play Miss Argentina because she was also just as show stopping in the Broadway production, the most recent one at the palace, and the combination of dance and vocal talent with which she attacks this number, what I know now in the second act is utterly sensational. Something about the way in which she executes this diva showgirl choreography being thrown around by the ensemble feels very much like she is going in for the kill. The high belt that she ascends to by the end of the whole thing, she reigns supreme over the Prince Edward Theatre for the few minutes that she is on stage as Miss Argentina and I think she's sensational. So that brings me then to the end of my thoughts about Beetlejuice. Many positive things to say about the West End production. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but my reaction to it was completely and utterly in line with how I felt when I saw the show at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. Broadway. I've been a big fan of the cast recording for years. I don't know that every detail of the full show as it is now years on from its original Broadway premiere utterly lives up to the excitement of that. And I don't know that the version that has now arrived in the West End necessarily does either. There is a version of this that we could have got where perhaps the production was a little bolder, the preview period a little longer, and while I thought the energy was pretty good this evening, that was at the Press Night performance, which tends to be more enthusiastic than most. I worry about how this might play a few months down the line at a midweek matinee. However, I had a nice enough time and as always, I encourage you to go and check it out for yourselves. And if you have already, please let me know what you thought in the comments section down below. Where have you seen Beetlejuice before and what did you think? And if you enjoyed listening to my review and you would like to hear more of them, then make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube, follow me on podcast platforms or sign up to my free weekly email substack newsletter. In the meantime, I have been Mickey Joe, and as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stay Stagey day oh day. Oh. For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.