Beetlejuice was adapted for the stage by Scott Brown, Anthony King and Eddie Perfect.Matthew Murphy
Title: Beetlejuice
Written by: Scott Brown, Anthony King and Eddie Perfect
Performed by: Justin Collette, Megan McGinnis, Haley Hannah, Emilia Tagliani, Will Burton, Jesse Sharp, Sarah Litzsinger
Directed by: Alex Timbers
Company: Mirvish Productions
Venue: CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre
City: Toronto
Year: Until July 19, 2025
Broadway has a tenuous relationship with ghosts. It’s a dynamic of high highs – the titular ghoul in The Phantom of the Opera, the imagined son Gabriel in Next to Normal – and very low lows. (I performed in Ghost: The Musical as a teen: No amount of channeling Patrick Swayze could save that spectral clunker of a book.)
Beetlejuice, as adapted for the stage by Scott Brown, Anthony King and Eddie Perfect, expects a theatre-savvy, ghost-acquainted audience. More than once, the show’s eponymous, vulgar demon (played by a terrific Justin Collette) makes jokes at Broadway’s expense, the antiquated traditions that frame a trip to the theatre. Thinking of letting your phone ring while the actors are onstage? You might reconsider under Collette’s withering, wacky stare at the very top of the show.
Much like Tim Burton’s 1988 film, Beetlejuice is a show about death. And hauntings. And exorcisms. Infused with showy stagecraft and an updated sense of humour, Alex Timbers’s flashy production makes the afterlife – and the liminal, phantasmagorical existences that precede it – feel like a carnival.
When we meet teenage Lydia (played on opening night by fantastic understudy Emilia Tagliani), she’s decidedly alive – unfortunately. Her mother has recently died, and her father (Jesse Sharp) has already moved on to a new woman: Delia, the grating, pseudo-positive life coach he hired for Lydia (Sarah Litzsinger). For the first half of the musical, Lydia wants, more than anything, to be dead.
Not all is lost, however. Lydia’s new home is deeply haunted, both by Beetlejuice and by the couple who died in the fixer-upper’s living room (Will Burton and the ever-wonderful Megan McGinnis).
Soon enough, Beetlejuice makes a deal with his new, breathing friend: He needs a human to say his name three times. She needs a way to connect with her mother. And just like that, an unlikely friendship is born.
Beetlejuice pushes the boundaries of good taste in a way that’s usually hilarious. Collette’s raspy take on the half-dead monster conjures a creepy, conniving neighbour who might mean well, but who has a strange way of showing it.
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I have concerns for the health of Collette’s vocal cords – that gravelly wheeze, which he maintains for the show’s lengthy two-and-a-half-hour runtime, can’t possibly be good for his throat – but he sounds great both in song and in speech.
What’s so refreshing about Tagliani is her refusal to copy the Lydias who came before her; she doesn’t mimic Winona Ryder’s aloof eye-rolls or Sophia Anne Caruso’s rock-inspired whine. Tagliani’s Lydia is quiet, sensitive, sullen. When she sings, it’s a clear sound closer to Eva Noblezada or Lizzy McAlpine than Britney Spears.
Her Lydia is complex, full of contradictions and levity. She’s a pleasure to watch, and I hope Toronto audiences get a few more chances to see her in action.
The rest of the ensemble cast – including the chorus of dancing Beetlejuices, costumed in those trademark stripes by William Ivey Long – is similarly superb.
But McGinnis, perhaps best known for her portrayal of Beth opposite Sutton Foster in Little Women, is a standout. Her voice, as polished here as it was in the off-Broadway gem, Daddy Long Legs, is divine, and perfectly suited to the large CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre.
If there’s any quibble to be had with Beetlejuice, it’s the runtime. The second act, in particular, drags along as the production continually tries to out-antic itself. When massive sand worm puppets come out to play (“Foreshadowing!,” Beetlejuice quips in one of many meta-theatrical jabs), the show goes a touch off the rails, a cyclonic rage of raunchy non-sequiturs and pick-up lines.
But then again, you wouldn’t expect much less from Beetlejuice, would you? David Korins’s funhouse set captures the zany stakes of Lydia’s life, the topsy-turvy means she has to go to in order to secure just a crumb of her father’s attention.
Sure, the musical goes a hair too far at times, and wears out its welcome 20 minutes or so before Beetlejuice’s final descent into hell, but that’s arguably part of the fun.
I’ll be the first to admit that musicals based on existing intellectual property can be brutal. (Let’s not discuss the 2018 Tony Awards, in which three mediocre screen-to-stage adaptations battled it out for the coveted title of Best Musical against The Band’s Visit, which mercifully won.)
Beetlejuice, I’m pleased to report, is one of the good ones. It preserves the heart and hysterics of the film, while amping up the theatrics to 11.
I won’t say Beetlejuice is Broadway’s best musical about a ghost (you’re welcome, The Phantom of the Opera). It’s not even Broadway’s best musical about a demon (ditto, Sweeney Todd).
But Beetlejuice is a darn fun time at the theatre, a formidable touring production with punch and pizzazz. Just don’t say the title more than twice – you might be a little spooked by what happens next.
