You just can’t keep a beloved ghost dead: Beetlejuice is coming back to haunt Broadway, with a return engagement of the increasingly popular musical taking possession of Broadway’s Marriott Marquis Theatre on Friday, April 8, 2022.
Casting will be announced later.
“We sincerely thank the Beetlejuice fans,” said producers Mark Kaufman (Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures) and Kevin McCormick (Langley Park Productions). “It is because of their support that we will be able to blow the roof off the Marquis Theatre three-times over with fun and laughter, laughter and laughter!”
The producers aren’t exaggerating about the fan power: Beetlejuice, which got off to a relatively slow start when it opened at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre in April 2019, with both box office and critics’ review rather hit and miss. But a funny thing happened on the way to the haunting: Over the following summer, ticketbuyers began to materialize, seats started filling. Perhaps the biggest word-of-mouth success of its era, Beetlejuice seemed like a surefire candidate for Broadway longevity, due in large part to its popular stars Sophia Anne Caruso and, especially, Alex Brightman as the mischievous hipster ghost.
But the business uptick was, apparently, too little too late for the Shubert Organization, which cited the early sluggishness at the box office as cause for evicting the musical to make way for the upcoming mega-production of The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman and produced by Scott Rudin, who used to be pretty mega himself.
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Beetlejuice played its final performance of the original run on March 11, 2020, with rumored plans of an eventual return scotched by the Covid pandemic shutdown.
Beetlejuice‘s growing fanbase was not happy with any of it, with lots of “Ok, Boomer” memes making the point that the youthful-skewing Beetlejuice was being exorcised to make way for a longer-in-the-tooth classic musical from Broadway’s Golden Age. Internet rumors and wishful thinking combined to keep Beetlejuice alive throughout the pandemic shutdown.
Based on Tim Burton’s 1988 film starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder, the musical tells the story of Lydia Deetz (played in the original Broadway production by Caruso), a strange and unusual teenager whose life changes when she meets a recently deceased couple and Beetlejuice, a demon with a thing for stripes (Brightman).
Directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge), Beetlejuice features an original score by Eddie Perfect (King Kong), a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, music supervision, orchestrations and incidental music by Kris Kukul, and choreography by Connor Gallagher.
Beetlejuice is produced by Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, Langley Park Productions, Jeffrey Richards, JAM Theatricals, IMG Original Content, Rebecca Gold, Ben Lowy, James L. Nederlander, Warner/Chappell Music INC., and Zendog Productions in association with DeRoy Federman Productions/42nd.club, Latitude Link, Mary Lu Roffe, Terry Schnuck, Marc Bell & Jeff Hollander, Jane Bergere, Joanna Carson, Darren Deverna & Jere Harris, Mark S. Golub & David S. Golub, The John Gore Organization, Ruth & Steve Hendel, LHC Theatrical Fund, Scott H. Mauro, Networks Presentations, No Guarantees, Gabrielle Palitz, Pierce Friedman Productions, Adrian Salpeter, Iris Smith and Triptyk Studios.
Check out the comeback video announcement above.
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