Beetlejuice the Musical reviews: the cast dazzles but the show leaves critics wanting more

"There are drop-dead gorgeous designs and the performances are full of life but this off-kilter escapade has scattershot gags and unmemorable songs."

“David Fynn certainly isn’t short of juice in the lead role.”

“There’s an awful lot to enjoy in Alex Timbers’ off-kilter production, with uncanny lighting by Kenneth Posner and trippy projections from Peter Nigrini. Set designer David Korins gives devilishly clever makeovers to the house where milquetoasts Adam and Barbara Maitland (David Hunter and Chelsea Halfpenny, both excellent) discover they are newly deceased.”

“Excelling in her solos, Hannah Nordberg brings drop-dead energy to furrowed adolescent Lydia Deetz, who promptly moves into their home.”

“Alasdair Harvey is suitably salacious as Lydia’s dad Charles who, after her mum’s death, has hooked up with life coach Delia (Aimie Atkinson), wound as comically tight as her topknot.”

“Charles G LaPointe’s hair and wig designs work wonderfully weird magic (Chasity Crisp’s coiffure is like a wisp of her cigarette smoke) while William Ivey Long’s inspired costumes range from the toxic yet sparkly Miss Argentina (Vanessa Aurora Sierra) to Lydia’s spidery black lace. Seeing shrunken-head guy in the flesh is a treat.”

“There are the added delights of Jeremy Chernick’s special effects, Michael Weber’s illusions and Michael Curry’s puppets, all of which leave you wanting more.”

“The numbers are entertaining but oddly unmemorable.”

"Fresh from Broadway, the stage version of Tim Burton’s comedy-horror is full of swearing, smut and local in-jokes. It’s overkill."

“Tim Burton’s bonkers 1988 comedy-horror film about a miscreant, louche ghost has become a kitsch, madly frenetic musical. The show has a lot in its favour – not least daft entertainment value – but it lacks essential spark.”

“The film’s stars, Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton, remain a tough act to follow as Lydia and Beetlejuice – and it’s testament to the stage presence of Hannah Nordberg and the conspiratorial playfulness of David Fynn that this dynamic works so well.”

“The show can’t take itself too seriously but if it wants its themes about feeling invisible, deathly conformity and the grieving process to land, it needs to calm down.”

“If much of it left me cold – Australian composer Eddie Perfect’s generic rock and Broadway pastiche score largely going in one ear and out the other – I also felt like the spectre at the feast: the audience around me audibly loved it.”

“Visually, Alex Timbers’s production has a beautiful sense of hallucinogenic spectacle, complete with copious outbreaks of dance and a fittingly ridiculous giant sandworm."

"Imported from Broadway to London’s Prince Edward Theatre, this screen-to-stage Tim Burton adaptation is lively if unmemorable fun."

“Here, Beetlejuice is a kind of chaotic compere for this macabre tale of teen rebellion, padding it out with sweary jokes, unmemorable songs, and side-swipes at the other, arguably better constructed musicals currently haunting theatreland.”

“It's fun watching writers Scott Brown and Anthony King flesh out Beetlejuice's backstory, riffing on the film's themes of misfit loneliness. But this undead scene-stealer stops us taking the actual narrative here seriously, and means we don't have space to feel the aching poignancy just beneath its surface.”

“It's meant to be Lydia’s story, but she barely gets a single witty line, and the plot that follows is rattled through so fast that it's easy to miss a twist or two.”

“When this show hits the mark, it's hilarious. Atkinson is brilliantly kooky, satirising the very 21st century phenomenon of life coaches trying to manifest their way to riches.”

“The set is quirky but flimsy, prone to minor malfunctions and relying on a big curtain to hide transitions from view. And Eddie Perfect's score is fun without being distinctive – it could do with a bit more 1980s gothic texture to sell the darkness of this world.”

“Prepare to be pummelled. The stage version of Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s 1980s gothic comedy about spooky goings-on in a big old house, hits you over the head with loud jokes and even louder songs by the Australian composer Eddie Perfect.”

“David Fynn leads a sharp cast, but this Broadway hit, which has finally arrived at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End, should be consumed with several glasses of wine to get you in the party mood.”

“Still, although it’s tangled at times, the script, peppered with the occasional f-word, is often genuinely witty."

“[David] Fynn, whose alternate in the role is Tom Xander, makes a very early appearance in his battered striped suit, and soon our manic antihero sets about tearing down the fourth wall, mocking musical theatre conventions, leering at the audience and lobbing gags into the stalls.”

“Amid the high-energy rock anthems there’s more room too for Lydia Deetz (Hannah Nordberg), the ultra-gloomy young girl who befriends the Maitlands, the winsome couple — played by David Hunter and Chelsea Halfpenny — whose accidental death sets the yarn in motion.”

“Aimie Atkinson gets some of the best lines as Delia, the dizzy life coach who is having an affair with Lydia’s widowed father, Charles (Alasdair Harvey).”

"This theatre kid-tastic Broadway adaptation definitely isn’t for Tim Burton purists."

“I loved Burton’s surreal vision of a preposterously bureaucratic afterlife, and was dismayed that the whole concept is here reduced to a virtual Easter egg. As much as anything, it just feels a bit unambitious not to tackle it.”

“Here, David Fynn’s Betelgeuse is a mischievous spirit with foreknowledge of the imminent deaths of Barbara and Adam Maitland (Chelsea Halfpenny and David Hunter), whose house he’s been haunting (or at least lurking in) for some years. He’s the lead character from the off, greeting us with an onslaught of meta-wisecracks and iffy pop cultural references as he outlines the beginnings of his very convoluted scheme to gain a foothold in the human world via Lydia Deetz (Hannah Nordberg), the daughter of the family that buys the house after the Maitlands croak it.”

“The obvious strengths here lie in Fynn’s charismatic bad taste emceeing and Perfect’s brightly melodic, guitar-heavy tunes. On the whole, the dialogue – by Scott Brown and Anthony King – is better at being funny than sincere, and Perfect’s lyrics are better at being sincere than funny: jokes are laboured to the point of exhaustion, but there are some banging ballads.”

“Youngster Nordberg looks great as Lydia and can really sing, although she markedly lacks Winona Ryder’s sullen charisma (part of the issue probably being that Ryder didn’t have to sing songs all the time).”

“The good news is, book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King’s take on the irreverent 1988 film has lost none of the cheeky charm that seduced so many American audiences. Replete with new, UK-oriented jokes (a few gags about Paddington drew huge laughs, and quite a few gasps), it redraws Tim Burton’s original material, rejigs the plot and twists the ending into a largely satisfactory paint-by-numbers night out.”

“The biggest change – the quirky eponymous demon, who has a remarkably small role in the actual film, is now our host for the evening – deploying shockingly filthy direct address as he connives to bring about his own return to visibility when his name is said three times. It’s a neat framing device, allowing the show to stand on its own feet rather than feeling like a formulaic carbon copy of the film.”

“A musical, of course, has to deliver on the music, and it’s fair to say that some of Eddie Perfect’s numbers have already been catapulted into musical theatre hall-of-fame – there were doubtless hundreds of eager fans who knew every word to “Say My Name” (this critic included). There are also a few duds along the way – the show could lose a ballad or reprise and only gain as a result.”

“Lighting (Kenneth Posner) and sound (Peter Hylenski) are true to the standard Burton expectations, while conjuring all the right “Disneyland Halloween theme” vibes.”

“William Ivey Long’s variety of costumes are a moribund menagerie of premium offerings, especially for those coming up from the Netherworld.”

“All too often, performers have to end their numbers in front of a curtain while a set change takes place behind cover in order to keep the pace up. It’s distracting, pulling the character out of their environment and disrupting the scene.”

“The show is constantly an amusing ride, but never really flashes its teeth.”

"Relentlessly arch."

“Alex Timbers’ production – which had a Broadway run bedevilled by Covid-related closures – looks cheap and feels flat, however strenuously a capable cast try to cajole us into having a wild time.”

“Perfect’s songs alternate between the anodyne and the wearyingly verbose, stacked rhymes piling up and jokes about cocaine and creepy old guys who perv over underage girls standing in for wit or edge.”

“Nordberg – looking like Wednesday Addams’ hot big sister, with her jet-black hair, pallor and lacy dress (costumes by William Ivey Long) – gets to belt out Dead Mom, which is the closest the show comes to sincerity, and she does it with aplomb. And Halfpenny and Hunter make deft work of the patter-number lyrics with which Perfect bombards them.”

“Nor does the show deliver on spectacle. Peter Nigrini’s video largely settles for storybook gnarled tree branches and cartoonish swirls, and the puppetry – designed by Michael Curry and featuring a giant sandworm and a cavorting roast pig, among others – would be substantially put to shame by most big-budget pantos.”

“Some scenes are even played, bargain-basement style, in front of a cloth; and Connor Gallagher’s choreography is dismayingly tame, an amalgam of basic vaudevillian moves that never stands a chance of taking us to another dimension.”