Ghost With The Most

After withering out-of-town reviews, the eye-popping Beetlejuice opens on Broadway—rising from the ashes like its demented demon star

- Mary Kaye Schilling

IN DIRECTOR TIM BURTON’S 1988 CULT comedy Beetlejuice, the titular ghost, played by Michael Keaton, is on screen for a quarter of an hour, max. The film, an irresistible mix of anarchy and cartoonishness, focuses on the recently deceased Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), a painfully nice couple now haunting their beloved Connecticut fixer-upper. When pretentious New York yuppies buy the place and give it a vulgar postmodern makeover, their alienated Goth daughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder), enlists the creepy Beetlejuice to aid the Maitlands in scaring her parents out of the house.

Keaton made the most of his 15 minutes: Stardom followed that indelible and deliciously lecherous performance, which is why “those who grew up loving the movie forget it’s essentially about a dead, childless couple and their search for a surrogate child,” says Scott Brown, part of the team tasked with creating the $21 million Beetlejuice musical that’s about to open on Broadway. “Beetlejuice’s choices aren’t what drive the movie—he’s barely a character. He’s more of a weapon that’s unleashed.”

Not enough, in other words, to wrap a two-hour-plus musical around. Instead, Brown; his writing partner, Anthony King; and the show’s ringmaster, director Alex Timbers, shift the focus from the Maitlands to the relationship between Lydia and Beetlejuice. A Saturday morning cartoon, loosely based on the movie, had successfully made that move in 1989 (the show aired through 1991). “It was for kids, but it was smart, with hipster credibility—there are a ton of memes around it online,” says Brown. “Beetlejuice is less of an antagonistic source—more like Lydia’s dead genie guy who makes funny cracks and does magic.”