Beetlejuice The Musical - review

Beetlejuice The Musical

On October, 10. Me and the rest of the IB theatre students saw Beetlejuice The Musical (Written by Scott Brown and Anthony King and directed by Alex Timbers) It was a great experience and I really liked it. The play starts off with Beetlejuice himself needing help from the living, he needs a living person to say his name 3 times in order to gain more power. He finds the perfect house were the owners are just about to die from a tragic accident, how does he know this? Don’t ask me. Adam and Barbara Maitland become the recently deceased couple, and they died in their own house which gives them even more power as ghosts. When they pass they meet beetlejuice, they agree to work together to scare the new owners of their house. Only to find out that one member of the new family, Lydia can see beetlejuice. She is a very depressed girl who recently lost her mother. Beetlejuice tells her to say his name 3 times, she sees opportunity to use Beetlejuice to her own advantage against her father and his new fiance. But after many scary efforts she finally gives in and says the magic words “BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE” He then becomes visible and more powerful than ever before. This is where things start going down hill. They both scare her family out of the house and live on their own for a while. Until Lydia decides to try and find her mother in the nether-world (the after life) She searches the nether-world but she does not find her, but she does find a new bond with her father who followed her there. But when they return Beetlejuice wants more, for he can become mortal again if he marries another mortal. He decides to marry Lydia against her will, she gives in with the intention to kill him when the opportunity arises. And at the end of the wedding she kills him with a stake through his heart, poor Beetlejuice got to be alive again for 6 whole seconds.

 Mr. Brightman did an amazing job with the character of Beetlejuice. He captured the audience in so many different ways. Comedy was of course his main choice but the voice, movement, delivery of lines, look and feel was what really made him such a lovable character. What was most memorable about the play was surely the moment after intermission when they open up in the nether world. The lights was like nothing I had ever seen before in a play and it was completely unexpected, there were squared lights that kept getting smaller and it really created a sense of infinity for the audience. The entire stage had this crooked vibe to it for the entire play, everything was angled wrong and slanted. At first it was very irritating for me to look at but after a while it created this funny feeling that really rubbed off on everyone. This was for sure one of the more important director choices made my Alex Timbers to capture the audience in this fantasy world which is a little crooked overall. Also the songs for the play were sometimes oddly placed after each other. For example; in the nether world Lydia has 2 songs nearly right after eachother were she is just standing on stage singing with no background show or anything else happening. This is fine once or twice in a musical in my opinion, but right after eachother is probably not a good choice. A quick way to make an audience uninterested in her words and the meaning behind her songs. This didn’t happen but it was a pretty close call for me. On the other hand i really liked the Maitland home setting and how it changed when Lydia’s family moved in. It really went from a cozy family home to a small mansion feel when they changed all of the furniture and the walls.

I liked the musical, I would have liked to have fewer songs and focus more on the story. Some songs felt forced and unnecessary, we didn’t need all those songs in the first act. Save some for the second instead of squeezing them all into the first act.

I would rate Beetlejuice The Musical  a solid 8/10.

Talkback questions

What emotions did this performance bring out in you?

Anything that worked well?

What could have been done better?

What was your initial thought and feeling when the line " I killed Wellington" was delivered on stage?

What was your opinion of the character In the beginning compared to the end?

ISTA reflection

What were the most memorable experiences you had and what did you learn?

The ISTA experience was great overall, disregarding that I had a devastating cold the last day which made me miss the last day's classes.  Other than the shows we saw I really loved to see what life will be like in college for me when I'm doing my BFA. I know that it probably won't be the same but it really brought back that mindset of acting every day which I will most certainly do in College. All the classes we took except for the masterclasses involved using a script, the purpose was to create our own versions of them in groups. This was very fun and we saw so many different ways a script can be interpreted depending on the different actors and directors. This really reminded me of how a script is just a guideline to your performance. Meaning that you create what you want with what you are given. The most memorable experience for me was the master class with tectonic. We learned about how a director looks for ways to capture an audience and how one gets the message they want to deliver across to the audience as well. Then he (the man from tectonic) talked about how we create magical moments in theatre. Those moments were your heart just fills up with warmth at the end of a play. And the answer to that was to really focus on the plotline. We have to focus on the goal of our characters, why do they need to do this or that. There has to be a clear sense of accomplishment and failure if you want to capture as many people as possible. Yes ending a play without closure is an artistic choice but it will leave many viewers mad, confused or disappointed. So we learned a lot about the meaningful aspects of theatre as an art form from tectonic. This was not the case with the regular classes, they focused only on the acting and performance aspects. We acted out the scripts we were given but never really broke down the meaning behind each one of them. Because there was no meaning, they were simply (to me) acting exercises. Stuff I've been doing for almost my whole life. That does not mean that it wasn't fun tho ;) What I would have wanted would to be thought and criticized on my acting abilities. I really want to grow as an actor and doing exercises is a way to stay in "acting shape" but it is hard to develop as an actor without being given directions on how to better my acting itself. But I did learn about how and why we do certain things at different times in different plays to capture an audience. And to sum it up, creating a good play is all about finding the right emotions at the right time and showing a clear goal/mission that the characters are striving for. Thanks for making this happen and letting us go on such a fun and cool trip, peace.

Progress in Solo project

In the past weeks, I have really begun to explore the character "Ed" for my solo piece. I have been experimenting a lot with the "magic if" method to build on the characters' emotions and trying to find what sets him off. During class I've been guided a lot by my "mentor" Olivia, she has helped me find the words, the emotions, and the stage directions for my performance. And with the magic if being implemented for my preparations it is all coming together nicely. In the beginning, I did not have a lot of ideas for my solo project. But over the past 2 weeks, I have had an overload of ideas. Now it is simply a process of elimination to get to where I want. I am swinging between staging the performance as an interrogation, a confession or a direct conversation between Ed and his son. If I did it as an interrogation I would have him sit center stage and start talking slowly about his wrongdoing. If done as a confession I want him to stand center stage and use the lights (Left, center, Right) as the truth he doesn't want to confess to. Then when he says the line " I killed Wellington" all the lights will light up the entire stage and he will have a moment of extreme realization of what he just said. If I do it as a conversation I will have him on stage with the light just turned blue and do the monologue.