Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania
Broadway hit Beetlejuice, now running at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre before making more stops on its North American tour, features a delightful score and book along with hysterical performances. It’s the must-see show of the season. Director Alex Timbers and his crew have morphed the beloved film into a fun house of a musical, with surprises hiding under every footlight. Read more…
Socks Whitmore – Stage Raw
Spooky season has come early to the Hollywood Pantages, where supernatural shenanigans are taking the stage. Welcome to the show about death: Beetlejuice the Musical (The Musical, The Musical…), a toe-tapping reimagining of Tim Burton’s 1988 cult classic. The original story centers on Adam and Barbara Meitland, a recently deceased couple attempting to exorcise the living from their haunted home. In the musical, the cast of characters are the same in name, but the story gets a total makeover — and in this reviewer’s opinion, a total upgrade. Read more…
Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld
When Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” opened on movie screens back in 1998, the fantasy-comedy starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Winona Ryder was a sensation, grossing $75 million (almost the equal of $200 million today), winning an Oscar for Best Makeup, and spawning an animated television series, video games, a belated sequel set to debut next year, and a stage musical that launched in 2018 and hit Broadway the following year, where it was nominated for eight Tony Awards including Best New Musical. That show, now playing at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, is a dynamic, dazzling affair that wows with fantastic performances, eye-popping lighting and set design, and rousing repertoire of songs. Read more…
Don Shirley – Angeles Stage
Speaking of the undead, the stage musical version of the 1988 movie “Beetlejuice” opened at the Pantages in Hollywood last night. If you haven’t seen the movie, it also focuses on characters and ghosts in the afterlife. But its tone is almost entirely flippant, and its plotting is even more convoluted than that of “Into the Woods” — but without the latter’s moving insights on the lives of its characters before they die. Read more…