The New Yorker – May 13, 2019

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Sarah Stiles and Leslie Kritzer help you see the narrative behind all the flash.

THETHEATRE

SUPPORTING PLAYERS

The castmates who make you care in “Beetlejuice” and “Tootsie.”

BY HILTONALS

ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS

I

don’t know why it’s taken me so long

to notice that when I go to conven-

tional Broadway musicals I often look

to the supporting actors to help me de-

termine how I feel about the story being

told. That’s because they, unlike the stars

of the show, don’t have to carry the weight

of all the tremendous machinery and are

freer to discover the surprises that their

characters and the plot may yield. The

dancer who steps out of line or the side-

kick with special comedic oomph: the

performers who disorder the order are

what can make an overwhelming, arena-

style Broadway spectacle more fun to

watch. The musicals “Beetlejuice” (di-

rected by Alex Timbers, at the Winter

Garden) and “Tootsie” (at the Marquis,

under the direction of Scott Ellis)—both

based on movies that were immensely

popular in the nineteen-eighties—fea-

ture a number of energetic castmates,

most notably Leslie Kritzer, in the for-

mer, and Sarah Stiles, in the latter. These

actresses not only help you see the nar-

rative behind all the flash; they make

you care about what’s happening.

Tim Burton’s 1988 movie, “Beetle-

juice,” married the supernatural to the

whimsical; for the musical, the book writ-

ers Scott Brown and Anthony King have

thrown in the #MeToo movement and

nonbinary sexual fluidity, as well. (The

music and lyrics are by Eddie Perfect.)

Lydia (Sophia Anne Caruso) is a teen-

age girl with an interest in the nether-

world. She dresses in funereal colors for

most of the two-and-a-half-hour pro-

duction, and that’s appropriate, at least

when we first meet her: her mother has

just died. Standing a little apart from the

other funeral-goers at her mother’s grave-

side—the black-and-gray color scheme,

by the scenic designer David Korins,

evokes Edward Gorey’s gothic palette—

Lydia is a solitary mourner, at a distance

from her widowed father, Charles (a very

funny Adam Dannheisser), who’s prob-

ably just thinking about himself anyway.

An only child, Lydia has a life coach,

the brazen Delia (Kritzer), who is also

Charles’s lover. But Delia isn’t much help

at moments like this, or at any moment,

really—what gets her off, energizes her,

is her own greed—and Lydia’s opening

number addresses her feeling that grief

doesn’t have a place in the world, and

therefore neither does she. Like Masha

in Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” Lydia is in

mourning for her own life, but, unlike

Masha, she has barely lived, and how is

she going to go about doing that now?

On one side of her are Delia and

Charles, and on the other are Beetlejuice

(Alex Brightman), an ectoplasmic id who

has a thing for Lydia, and a recently de-

ceased couple, Adam (Rob McClure)

and Barbara (Kerry Butler), who were

killed in a freak accident. The couple’s

being dead is a plus for Beetlejuice, be-

cause it gives him a job: to teach them

how to scare the bejeezus out of Delia

and Charles, who now, with Lydia, oc-

cupy the house that was once theirs. The

ghosts want the house back, and Beetle-

juice wants Lydia (and sometimes Adam).

The humor of the show rests on Beetle-

juice and his desire to return to human

form, and Brightman is brilliantly cast.

Like an over-the-hill rocker who can’t

believe that the crowds have gone, he’s

desperate for our attention, feeding the

audience rough-and-tumble insights and

double takes, while making jabs at the

mortal stupidity around him.

What Beetlejuice most wants is the

love of a mother, but his mother is a

kind of walking gargoyle—we meet her

in Hell. And Delia is worse, because

she’s more evasive and self-satisfied. Any

sentiment that she has for Lydia rattles

around in her heart like dry seeds in a

pod: what do feelings have to do with

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