It's Showtime, Folks! Brightman, Caruso & More Talk All Things BEETLEJUICE

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

One of this season's most eagerly awaited new musicals is Beetlejuice, which of course is based on Tim Burton's beloved film

It'll open at the Winter Garden Theater on April 25th, and we dropped by subculture to meet the company

At first, it seemed very daunting because the movie is the movie. But the minute we got into it, everybody involved went

we're going to do a great adaptation. And I think what a great adaptation is, is you don't just put the movie on stage

I don't think it works. So what we did is we took all the great stuff from the movie and just ran with it

I mean, so there's a different story being told here with the characters that everybody loves

We've made sure to pass the purest test, and all the purists came and see it and loved it

But there's so much new stuff in here that if you've never seen the movie, no problem

And if you see in the movie, there's definitely little highlights, you know, along the way

You know, some of the storylines in our production are a lot clearer than in the film

Lydia, for example, is the, you know, the protagonist. is she's the focus of the show and the heart of it

And I think it's really amazing how we're focusing it on a young female

and a young teenage female who's going through something. And just I think it's really accessible to people my age, to women, to honestly everybody

You know, and a lot of the themes are things that I really think need to be talked about, actually. So, yeah

It has everything the people who love the movie will want to see. but I think it goes much deeper They took the story and all the same characters pretty much but then really focus on Lydia and Beetlejuice

and about how she lost her mom. And so they kind of reinvented the story

And it's a total journey, you know, and it's really, it's, you know, definitely traditional Broadway theater

with great music, big production numbers, and I do magic. I had heard murmurings of it

And I was like, I want in, I want in And Alex Timbers, we were mutual fans of each other

And we had never gotten to work together And he said, you know what, let's go out to dinner

So we got to dinner And Alex Timber said to me, you know, I think the part of the movie that wasn't really explored

That I think we can really dive into Is that you have this demon obsessed with being alive

And this teenager obsessed with being dead And what happens when those forces collide

And I thought, you're the guy who should be in charge of this musical. Like I was just like, okay, I'm in, I'm in

You have puppets, you have magic. Everything's in this show, right? Magic, smoke, puppets, things moving, lights stroving

I mean, everything. And Alex Timbers is a genius. My favorite, he gets me

We have shorthand when we talk about stuff. I go, maybe we'll try. He goes, yeah, I go, okay

You know, like he is just truly one of the few directors that I know that really knows how to do comedy

and inventive visual, spectacle, unbelievable, everything. Like, he really, he's the best

So we went back with David Korn the set designer and William Ivey Long of the Costumes We went back to the original film but then we went beyond that We looked at Burton sketchwork from the college We looked at his entire Uvra

So the goal is not in any way to mimic the film. It's to kind of honor this artist's aesthetic in a sort of larger way

You've fleshed out some other characters, right? Yeah, I feel like the bookwriters and the composer have done a great job

of sort of taking these characters you love and expanding them. The plot isn't exactly the same as the

film it sort of goes in kind of really kind of interesting directions I think to be surprising

the people that know the film and really satisfying the people who don't know it at all. The musical style that unlocked it was kind of like finding a way to put every style into it

especially into Beetlejuice's music. Each character, like Lydia Dietz, who is played by

Sophia and Caruso, you know, her music is kind of like, I always imagined it was like, you know

a teenage girl in her bedroom with a vending guitar and a tiny little lamp

belting out, you know, angsty rock songs. But Bealjuice is a different one

There was a clue in the script when I first got it. It was, you know, Beetlejuice has, he's not just one demon

He has multiple demons running through him. He's a kind of aimless multiple personalities

And I was like, I wouldn't it be great within the one song if every one of those personalities had a voice

and that voice matched a particular genre or a style and the whole thing just kept turning, you know

no matter what he wanted to do, if you wanted to seduce somebody, or wanted to scare somebody or he wanted to be a cheerleader like that he would turn himself inside out It been incredible and we been working on it for a long time We had the luxury of I mean I came on maybe two years ago

So we've been working on a workshop. We did the performance in D.C. We're working on it again

It's been incredible because you really get to know each other, first of all

get to know your character, get to know the creatives in a way that you might not get to know them

if you're working for six weeks before you do something. So it's a really unique experience

I just love doing the show. It sounds really corny. But audiences ate it up in D.C

And we love doing it in the rehearsal room because we're constantly making each other laugh

Everyone's making us laugh. We're always playing for each other, playing with each other

And I tell you, we're having the greatest time. Jill and I together playing a couple

and coming up with different things. Today we were coming up with different things

We're constantly looking to see what else can we do, what else can we do

And it's so much fun to do. that with her. It's great. So there's all the Easter eggs you want

Lots of things you're going to get in the set, in the costumes, and all the, you know, some little nuggets in the netherworld

But there's also some new things. For your role, what's the coolest thing about playing himself

Oh, where do I begin? Where do I begin? I think the coolest thing about it is that it is a character that all the audiences

who love Beetlejuice the movie already know. And it's just my chance to kind of take, do my little take on it and really just try

to bring up the relationship that I have with Delia, played by Leslie Critzer, who is like

my best friend in real life, and it's just a joy to play her best friend on stage two