After a seven-year wait – Beetlejuice finally brings the West End alive
Broadway’s smash hit musical Beetlejuice has finally crawled out of the Netherworld and onto the London stage, taking up residence at the Prince Edward Theatre for a limited run.
This is the show audiences have been asking for, for years, only recently taken over by demanding screams for a Death Becomes Her West End transfer.
For fans of Tim Burton’s 1988 Academy Award-winning film (starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis and Catherine O’Hara), this is the nostalgia trip you have been waiting for.
Beetlejuice – The Show
The story follows Lydia Deetz, a morbid teenager grieving the death of her mother, who discovers that her new home is haunted by the recently deceased couple Adam and Barbara Maitland and, more troublingly, by Beetlejuice, a crude, anarchic ghost-with-the-most who strikes a deal with Lydia to help him cross back into the world of the living.
Equal parts coming-of-age story and supernatural mayhem, the show tells the story of the unlikely but touching bond between a lonely girl and the world’s most chaotic dead man.
Adapted for British Audiences
Having seen the Broadway production seven years ago (I know, I can barely believe it either), it’s clear that large sections have been rewritten for British audiences, which was totally necessary as I did wonder how such an ‘American’ show would work over here.
Jokes at the expense of James Corden’s manhood, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s face and repeated digs at Paddington the Musical feel a little cheap. This is not a pantomime, and it doesn’t need to stoop to that level to get a laugh. The show is funny enough on its own without resorting to easy targets.
The stage version isn’t a carbon copy of the film, but it hits all the notes a fan would want, including the iconic dinner party scene.
The Set
The set design is nicely done, although bringing the curtain down for every scene change does begin to feel a little stop-start after a while, disrupting the momentum of the show.
It feels somewhat less grandiose than the Broadway production and more like it has been designed as a touring production.
The Cast
David Hunter and Chelsea Halfpenny are charming as Adam and Barbara Maitland, the recently electrocuted couple who become unwilling participants in Beetlejuice’s scheme to return to the land of the living. All-American, wholesome and hopelessly out of their depth, they’re essentially Brad and Janet from The Rocky Horror Show (that’s no bad thing).
Alasdair Harvey is warm and funny as Charles Deetz, Lydia’s bewildered father, trying to hold the household together while the supernatural steadily dismantles it around him.
But it is Aimie Atkinson as Delia, Charles’s life coach, fiancée, who steals the show, holding space and singing the roof off the theatre. From originating a role in Six the Musical, to taking on the part Julia Roberts made famous in Pretty Woman, to this wonderfully bonkers life-coach-with-hidden-depths, Atkinson is quietly forging one of the most impressive and varied careers in British musical theatre.
David Fynn takes on the monumental task of playing Beetlejuice, a role that requires charisma, physical comedy and an ability to hold an entire evening together through sheer force of personality and he pulls it off with ease. He’s not the strongest singer of the night, but for this particular character, that barely matters. The comedy is precise and the energy is infectious.
As Lydia, our unhinged young protagonist, Hannah Nordberg belts her face off in the showstopping “Dead Mom” and takes Lydia on the full journey from grief and isolation, through the dangerous thrill of flirting with the underworld, to the realisation (as in all the best musicals – spoiler alert) that the love she’s been looking for was closer to home all along.
The chemistry between Fynn’s Beetlejuice and Nordberg’s Lydia hasn’t quite clicked yet. Both deliver excellent individual performances but there’s a sense that their mischievous double-act still has some work to do. These two should feel like the most chaotic partnership in theatrical history, but they occasionally feel like they’ve rehearsed in parallel rather than together. That said, it’s early days, and this is the kind of thing that tends to sharpen considerably once a show finds its feet with a real audience.
Was it worth the seven-year wait?
The long-awaited London production of Beetlejuice the Musical ticks all the boxes for a summer night out.
It’s colourful, daft, surprisingly touching and performed by a cast who are clearly having the time of their (after)lives. It probably won’t be sweeping the awards boards but it’s a lot of fun. Should it have come to London sooner while there was still huge momentum for it – perhaps. But if you’re a fan of the film, this is absolutely a show worth seeing before you die.
Just say his name – three time and see what happens.
★★★★
Reviewed by West End Wilma
Photos by Johan Persson
Beetlejuice the Musical plays at the Prince Edward Theatre until 17 April 2027, when it will be followed by a new production of Miss Saigon.
