‘Beetlejuice’ on Broadway: It Was a Horror Show. Now It Feels Like a Hit.
This critic didn’t see the version of Beetlejuice in Washington, D.C., that received a critical mauling. That mauling was resounding enough to approach Beetlejuice on Broadway, which opens Thursday night (at the Winter Garden, to October 6) with trepidation—and it also seems to have galvanized the production to change too, seemingly all for the better.
In this musical version of Tim Burton’s 1988 movie (many years in the making), gone post-D.C. is a weird-sounding boyband number, and the sight of a teenage girl selling Girl Scout cookies being chased by a troupe of male ghosts. The music and script have been rebooted.
Last month, the New York Post’s Michael Riedel reported that director Alex Timbers “sat down with the creative team and went through the show ‘beat by beat,’ expunging all that was tasteless, lewd and inappropriate in the post-#MeToo era. He also asked for better jokes and songs.