D.C.’s resurgence as a top-of-the-line test kitchen for Broadway musicals was reaffirmed last Thursday, as producers announced that a musical stage version of the ghoul-filled 1988 comedy Beetlejuice will have its world premiere in October at the National Theatre, where Mean Girls tried out last fall.
The show has a score by Australian composer and satirist Eddie Perfect and will be staged by Alex Timbers, the inventive director responsible for the off-Broadway hit Here Lies Love and such Broadway projects as Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Rocky. Perfect has also written the songs for a musical adaptation of King Kong that is envisioned for a Broadway run. Beetlejuice’s book is by Scott Brown, a former theater critic for New York magazine, and comedy writer Anthony King.
“I love the movie and I grew up with it,” Timbers said of the film that cemented the reputation of film maker Tim Burton, a big-screen maestro of what Timbers called “edgy subversiveness.” “This was his second feature and the first where you see his visual imprint. I was 10 when it came out. For me this is exciting, and a big responsibility, too.”
Beetlejuice starred, among others, Winona Ryder as a teenager moving into a haunted house with her yuppie parents, who recruit a mischievous spirit played by Michael Keaton, to rid the home of the ghosts of its previous owners. (Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones played the parents; Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin were the ghosts.) The movie, which over the years has developed a cult following, was made for about $15 million and took in about $74 million at the domestic box office.
Choosing Washington as the site of Beetlejuice’s pre-Broadway engagement follows an accelerating trend in the theater business, one that is proving to be a boon for the National, where major shows like If/Then and Mean Girls – which has its official Broadway opening next month – have tried out in recent years. The Broadway hit Come From Away had a crucial stop at Ford’s Theatre on the way to New York, and last year’s Tony winner, Dear Evan Hansen, began its life at Arena Stage in the summer of 2015.