by Alan Sherrod
Iit goes without saying Tim Burton’s cleverly crafted 1988 film, Beetle Juicehas a lot of fans. Based on the crowd in the Tennessee Theatre lobby on Tuesday evening, the Broadway musical stage adaptation has a lot of people, too. In every direction, one might spot an audience member wearing a striped dress of some design, or a cute black hairstyle reminiscent of the goth-ish Lydia. They, and probably a thousand or more others, were there for the Broadway production that is now on tour Beetle Juice Music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect and book by Scott Brown and Anthony King – Directed by Alex Timbers.
It’s worth mentioning beforehand that the producers have taken considerable liberties with some of the details and characters of the original Burton plot, replacing comic and cinematic nuances with bland and shallow cartoonishness that is a louder, but less complex alternative. For example, the role of Beetlejuice (Justin Collette, who clearly knows how to entertain an audience) has been changed to a character who is even more manic and desperate, and admittedly, “more vaudeville”. The character of Delia (Sarah Litzinger) has been given a somewhat different relationship to Charles (Jesse Sharp) and death-obsessed teenager Delia (Isabella Esler) which was a less-than-satisfactory departure from the film’s plot.
To be honest, a third of the fun and energy of this production comes from the cleverly designed set and stagecraft by David Korins and lighting by Kenneth Posner, which takes the audience on a wild ride from the remodeled living room of an old Connecticut farmhouse to the attic, where former owners Barbara and Adam (Megan McGinnis and Will Burton) have returned as newly-minted ghosts. The audience also goes to hell and back, with extra stops along the way. Some of these seem quite unnecessary as the scare effects are thrown in one after another, headache-inducing strobe lights are used to hide scene changes, and sight-gags and f-jokes seem constant. Peter Nigrini’s gothic atmosphere is enhanced by the use of cartoon-like projections of flying birds or bats as scene transitions quite effectively. On the technically weak side, the lyrics that everyone wants to hear in the more raucous musical numbers are often obscured by the density of electronic orchestration and loud amplification.
As a result, most of the show’s music fails to impress. One exception would be the extremely funny “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” taken at a dinner party for an investor when the tablemates are overwhelmed by the song’s “emotion.” Mostly, however, Beetle Juice’s makers didn’t know where to stop. While “more” probably sounded great on paper, inevitably one ends up overwhelmed by the effects and under-impressed by the creative substance that made the film so compelling.
Beetle Juice – Broadway Tour
Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street, Downtown Knoxville
Tuesday, June 11 — Sunday, June 16
Tickets and information
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