Astronomers can’t predict when Betelgeuse will go supernova. The celestial giant dimmed in 2019, was mistaken by some for dying, and then flickered back on.
Like the star that inspired its name, Beetlejuice the musical stubbornly refuses to die. After a rocky start at the National Theatre in 2018 during its pre-Broadway tryout, the show transferred to Broadway, shuttered during the pandemic, went viral with fans online, and rose again.
Eight years ago, when Beetlejuice first haunted the National, I diagnosed its fatal flaw for DC Theater Arts: the show couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a harmless Gen X nostalgia vehicle or an angsty teen drama. I wished then that Lydia would run off to boarding school with Hamlet and leave us to our fun.
The creators appear to have taken the opposite route. They kept the grief, made Lydia even more central, and stripped away some of the bawdy humor that made the striped specter so endearing.
So much for the power of the critic.
Now back at the National on its second national tour stop here since 2023, the show still seems stuck in limbo.
Ryan Stajmiger plays Beetlejuice opposite Leianna Weaver’s Lydia, and like Alex Brightman, who originated the role, Stajmiger chews every scene as if he hasn’t eaten in two or three millennia. Perpetually aggrieved, with his hair on end and his opinions on blast, he is your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, only greener and deader.
The musical’s mistake, then as now, is the decision by book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King and composer-lyricist Eddie Perfect to make Lydia the emotional engine of the evening. In Tim Burton’s 1988 film, she is a morbid teenager and, in her own words, “strange and unusual,” but she is not asked to carry a full-length grief play on her shoulders. The musical turns her into a perpetual mourner, saddling her with self-annihilative arias better suited to Madama Butterfly than Rocky Horror, which is this show’s spiritual cousin.
Weaver sings impressively, but each time her Lydia takes center stage for a wrenching solo about her late mother, the song feels beamed in from another show and we are left in a state of awkward confusion. Are we meant to laugh at her macabre streak in songs like “Dead Mom” or be moved by her sorrow? The show’s apparent answer: yes.
This is a production forever at war with itself: an irreverent, tasteless comedy fused to a grieving girl’s earnest indie-rock musical. There is nothing wrong with a Broadway musical wishing to take on grief, especially in our death-avoidant culture. But grief deserves a better vehicle than a show with poop jokes.
Tour director Catie Davis keeps the proceedings moving at a faster clip than in 2018 and leaves the show’s remaining pleasures intact, most notably William Ivey Long’s Día de los Muertos costumes, David Korins’ Edward Gorey-inspired sets, and the famous Day-O dinner scene with those giant, possessed prawns that will make you swear off shellfish forever.
Eddie Perfect’s score is still largely forgettable even when amped all the way up — loud enough, at times, to drown out the best singers in the cast. The exception is “What I Know Now,” a Netherworld tango added after the DC tryout, in which a former beauty queen regrets ending her life and extols the earthly pleasures she cut short. Carly Natania Grossman, understudying Miss Argentina on opening night, deserves a double dose of praise: for pinch-hitting, and for bringing down the house with the evening’s most rousing celebration of life.
“What I Know Now” proves the creative team could have found the right way to combine humor and melancholy, but in the end, they hitched their ambitions to the wrong IP. Fortunately for DC audiences, a better take on ghosts, memory, and regret is coming next season to Shakespeare Theatre Company: Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. If only we could say “Sondheim” three times and bring him back.
Running Time: Approximately two hours and 30 minutes, including intermission.
Beetlejuice plays through July 19, 2026, at the National Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC. Tickets are available online or by calling Broadway at The National at (202) 628-6161. Recommended for ages 13 and up; parental discretion advised. Contains strong language and mature references. An audio-described performance is offered July 12 at 7:30 pm, and an ASL-interpreted performance is offered July 16 at 7:30 pm.
Cast and creative credits for the North American tour can be found here.
Beetlejuice
Music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect. Book by Scott Brown and Anthony King. Music supervision, orchestrations, and incidental music by Kris Kukul. Tour direction by Catie Davis; original direction by Alex Timbers. Tour choreography by Michael Fatica; original choreography by Connor Gallagher.
