The Broadway Theatre Review: Death Becomes Her
By Ross
It all begins with an unexpected electric opening of the highest dramatic proportions, teasing us with some negative aging insults, but offering a secret solution that you will die for. It’s a thoroughly compelling beginning to one of the funniest brightest dark shows to open on Broadway in years. Adapted from the 1992 film of the same name, Death Becomes Her hits all the right notes, playing homage to the brilliant hit movie, yet also making it their own. After the initial reentry, the show delivers the expected but unexpected musical number from a show-within-a-show that winks at everything that is thematic about this musical. It’s Me! Me! Me! – the musical, starring ‘it’s all “For the Gaze“‘ Madeline, played rambunctiously by the always inspiring and completely intoxicating Megan Hilty (“Smash“; Broadway’s Noises Off!), purring and pulling out all the stops as she searches and searches for buckets of external validation and approval. It’s the wildest of numbers, playing forth a spoof-laden tribute to gay icons, one after the other, and ending with a rainbow of chorus boys in sequin-covered, butt-exposing costumes, courtesy of the brilliant Paul Tazewell (Broadway’s Suffs), that will dazzle you into hysterics and submission.
It’s not the number we expected; the one that Meryl Streep (check out Hilty’s bio in the Playbill) so deliciously opened the film with. For that homage, you’ll have to be a bit more patient. But this is the beauty of Death Becomes Her. Thanks to the impeccable work of director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli (Off-Broadway’s Silence! The Musical), it gives you all the treats you expect but in ways you didn’t see coming, plus so much more. The fun flies forth, with joke after joke, delivered to perfection in both the book by Marco Pennette (“Ugly Betty“) and the music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey (Off-Broadway’s Is There Anyone Alive Out There?), which keeps giving and giving in a way that nips, tucks, and elevates this piece into something far greater than its source material. And the cast as a whole delivers it all with gusto and determined bravado that flows like spiked champagne until the bitter delicious end.
The battle begins when the impossibly vain actress Madeline Ashton (Hilty) is visited backstage by her BFF foe Helen Sharp, played miraculously and uniquely enticing by Jennifer Simard (Broadway’s Company). She has arrived to introduce her to her fiance, the plastic surgeon, Ernest, played meticulously well by Christopher Sieber (Broadway’s The Prom). She has great faith in this love, dangling her fiance in front of the ever-competitive Madeline, like a piece of raw meat before a hungry leopard. Unfortunately for Simard’s Helen, we all know what this will lead to, especially when we see Madeline reappear in that very predator-print dress that matches her apartment’s sofa and her soul. Madeline knows this game better than anyone, especially the overly confident Helen, who doesn’t stand a chance. “Your upper register is amazing!” Ernest says innocently. “Thank you. They’re real,” Madeline replies knowingly and confidently.
Is that how these two fight? He asks. “Their tails are still wagging” he is told by the loyal but long-suffering gay personal assistant to the star, Stefan, played to delightful perfection by Josh Lamon (Broadway’s Groundhog Day). But the battle is now on between these two frienemy beasts, fighting for dominance against one another and against aging, utilizing the ever-present quest for beauty as the key to all things they deem important. Madeline quickly pulls Ernest away, marrying him as Helen flies in to try to reclaim her day, but to no avail. It’s the psych ward for her until her anger is refocused on a new goal, and this one isn’t about love anymore, but complete and total revenge. The rage is pure, and the theme is exacting as delivered by the impossibly good Simard, as we lean in with heightened wonder at the breathtaking deliverance of this savagely hilarious dark musical.
The tables are quickly turned, and turned around again, once the enigmatic sorceress, Viola Van Horn, delivered forth by Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child fame and Broadway’s Aida, and her band of trusted Immortals, led by the handsomest one of all, Chagall, beautifully embodied by Taurean Everett (Broadway’s The Cher Show). It’s that violet magical potion they both need to have to achieve the eternal youth they both desire, thinking it will make everything work in their favor. But the warning is given, deliciously, on cue, one moment too late to turn back, but both women wouldn’t have given up the bought-and-paid-for gift for anything, and inside this universal formula is everything that makes this musical work so well, even better than the movie did.
This hysterically fun ride never slows down for a minute, bathing itself in glorious viciousness wrapped in envy and revenge, delivering comedy all around the meticulously well-conceived set by Derek McClane (Broadway’s Moulin Rouge!), perfectly lit by Justin Townsend (Broadway’s Here Lies Love) with a solid sound design by Peter Hylenski (Broadway’s Beetlejuice). But the only piece that doesn’t quite feel as tightly constructed as all the rest is the portrayal of William’s Viola, which never feels as polished or powerful as the rest. Dressed to the high nines as glamorous as can be, her rendering never gives us compelling mystery like Isabella Rossellini did in the film. Nor does it feel as dangerous.
But the music, particularly the lyrics, are the starry electric features that give this piece its perverted grandeur, delivering line after line, moment after moment, to really dig into the conflicted personas flickering with vengeful regret and balanced by “spit-balling” determination. “We’re getting good at this,” one says to the other, wrapping themselves up together in their narcissistic tendencies, and even though those two fabulous creations, embodied by the delectable Hilty and Simard, are talking about murder, I’d say they were also talking about the whole damn delightful thing that they are delivering with all their heart to the stage. Death Becomes Her might be the best dark musical comedy to come along in decades. One could say it will knock your head off, mining jokes and jabs throughout, matched only by the deftness of those starry leads giving us everything we could possibly have hoped for from this screen-to-stage adaptation. And more.
