The ghost-with-the-most is back and ready to party with the living in the national touring production of Beetlejuice The Musical. The Musical. The Musical., which takes the Hult Center stage March 3 through 8.
Beetlejuice The Musical. The Musical. The Musical. is an adaptation of Tim Burton’s 1988 gothic horror comedy film of the same name. When a couple dies and finds out they are ghosts, they are distraught to learn that a new family has already bought and moved into their house. As the couple builds a connection with the family’s angsty teen daughter, Lydia, who is also not happy about the move, the three develop a plot to get the family out of the house.
The couple employs Betelgeuse, who is a malevolent bio-exorcist (someone who rids the dead of the living people around them) — and they don’t learn about his sinister intentions until it’s too late. He’s snarky, he’s crass, he’s dead and he appears when you say his name three times (don’t do it).
Whether you take or leave the plot, Beetlejuice has a lot of things a certain type of person needs to have a good time: elaborate, gothic costumes, makeup and set design, a sexually deviant decomposed dead person as an antagonist, sandworms and Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).”
Despite the play holding on to a number of the film’s iconic moments, Jeff Brooks, who plays Lydia’s father, Charles, says that the musical does vary from the film in a number of ways. While the stage adaptation is much more playful and entirely unserious in many parts, Brooks says that it has more moments than its predecessor that invite emotional introspection, particularly with a focus on Lydia’s mother’s passing.
“Literally, the first scene is a funeral,” he says. “We start this story with these two people, Charles and Lydia trying to deal with, in their own ways, the death of a third of their family. And so we throw the audience into that.” He continues, “We ask them to go with us on that journey and watch these characters deal with that. And that already brings so much pathos.”
In the film, Charles and his wife are passive antagonists who are thoughtless and inattentive towards Lydia, but Brooks says this play focuses much more on their father-daughter relationship. “He cares about keeping his family together,’ Brooks says. “I urge people to come see this play, because the character of Charles is so different from the movie.”
Which, admittedly, is probably a positive character change, seeing that the actor who portrayed Charles in the film has a very disturbing legacy.
Brooks does not have children in real life, but he says that this character has been an important one for him in his career.
He got his start on stage at three years old, escorting contestants on stage at a local beauty pageant. When he grew up, he was in national Broadway tours as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, he was in Oklahoma, Fiddler on the Roof and several other classics. Beetlejuice is his 10th Broadway tour, and at age 44, it’s his fourth portraying the father (with the others being Dear Evan Hansen, Elf and The Sound of Music).
“I used to say that my niche was likable and unlikable bad guys,” Brooks says. “It’s a little bit different of a spin for me to start playing these older characters that have a whole different set of values than the first few characters that I played early on in my career.” Now he says that he’s in his “#DadEra.”
When Beetlejuice stopped in San Diego, Brooks says there were several photos on the theater wall of him as Gaston and the rest of the 2010 Beauty and the Beast cast. “There I was at 29,” he says, noting that he was still older than a lot of the current Beetlejuice cast. “And my hair is down around my shoulders, and I’m 50 pounds lighter, and I was dancing in an ensemble.”
Brooks takes this in stride, saying that art very much imitates life for him. “While this family of ours travels all over the country, I have this really unique experience to be a source of experience and a source of advice and a shoulder to rest on,” he says. “They teach me really cool new music and dance moves, and I give them advice about the road.”
In his mid-40s, he doesn’t feel even close to old while surrounded by the young professionals, “but I feel the responsibility of my age more,” he says. “I didn’t used to think about that kind of stuff, setting an example. And I think about that more often now.” Brooks adds, “I think if more actors embraced aging as opposed to fleeing from it, we’d have a much better industry.
Watch Brooks portray a very different version of Charles, and watch your favorite bio-exorcist wreak havoc in Beetlejuice The Musical. The Musical. The Musical.
Beetlejuice The Musical. The Musical. The Musical. is 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 3 through Thursday, March 5, 8 pm Friday, March 6, 2 pm and 8 pm Saturday, March 7 and 1 pm and 6:30 pm Sunday, March 8. Tickets start at $49 and are available at HultCenter.org. With sexual humor and mature themes, it is recommended for ages 10 and up. There is also dialogue discussing suicide.