Beetlejuice The Musical, The Musical, The Musical is everything you would want an adaptation of Tim Burton’s 1988 classic movie to be. It’s loud, weird, anarchic, foul-mouthed, and visually bonkers. It feels like being strapped into some spooky Netherworld theme park ride, hurtling at full speed through giant puppets, absurd jokes, gothic visuals, fourth-wall breaking mayhem, and huge musical numbers, with a bit of sentimentality and a message about grief thrown in for good measure.
Based on the classic film that originally starred Michael Keaton as the titular bio-exorcist and Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, the musical first opened on Broadway in 2019, quickly becoming a cult hit with audiences despite a famously turbulent journey that included closure during the pandemic and multiple theatre changes. Ever since then, theatre fans have been desperate for a West End transfer, and now, after years of anticipation, it has finally arrived in London in gloriously Burtonesque style.
From the moment the show opens at a funeral, with young Lydia grieving over her mother’s coffin against a beautifully gothic backdrop of crooked gravestones and cartoon moons, you can feel the production saying: yes, we understand exactly why people love this world. The visual language is instantly recognisable as Burton-inspired, with everything slightly distorted and off-kilter, like reality itself has been warped into a dark cartoon. Then Beetlejuice himself appears, and the show kicks into another gear entirely.
Played at this performance by David Flynn, this version of Beetlejuice wisely avoids trying to imitate Michael Keaton. That was something I’d genuinely been worried about beforehand, because it would have been awful. Instead, Flynn creates something entirely his own: part stand-up comic, part chaos goblin, part needy man-child. One minute he’s delivering outrageously inappropriate one-liners directly to the audience, the next he’s behaving like some bizarre combination of Wayne from Wayne’s World, Michael from The Office, and Olaf from Frozen. It should not work remotely as well as it does. Beetlejuice completely owns the stage. From the moment he appears, it feels like you’re in his world and running on his manic energy. There’s a reason his name is on the front of the theatre.
But the show would not work without strong foils for all that supernatural madness, and Chelsea Halfpenny and David Hunter are just perfect as Barbara and Adam Maitland. They’re basically Brad and Janet from The Rocky Horror Show, dropped into Beetlejuice’s bizarre world and left desperately trying to keep up with the insanity unfolding around them. Oh, when I put it like that, it actually does sound a lot like The Rocky Horror Show! Anyway, the chemistry between them feels completely natural from the start, and both performers bring a warmth and sweetness that gives the show an emotional anchor. They are such ‘normal’ small town Americans, thrown into an insane environment and both actors play the escalating absurdity around them beautifully.
The script leans heavily into fourth-wall breaking and contemporary humour. There are loads of jokes and references in there, especially aimed at a West End audience, which somehow makes the whole thing feel a little bit special and personal. Beetlejuice jokes about being “as invisible and powerless as James Corden’s publicist”, throws in references to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elaine Paige (who first performed Evita on that very stage in 1978), and even aims a few well-placed digs at the staggeringly successful Paddington The Musical, including declaring, “That bear terrifies me.” He constantly drags the audience into the joke. It’s anarchic, cheeky, occasionally deliberately over-the-line, but always funny.
Visually, though, this production is on another level. David Korins’ set design is phenomenal. The Maitlands’ home begins as this quaint small-town American Victorian house, but filtered through Burton’s aesthetic so that every wall sits at a slightly wrong angle. It looks cosy at first glance, then increasingly unsettling the longer you stare at it. As Charles, Delia, and Lydia Deetz move in, the house transforms from sweet suburban Americana into grotesque avant-garde New York extravagance, before eventually becoming fully Beetlejuice-ified in Act Two. The speed and fluidity of the scene changes are often impressive.
Combined with Peter Nigrini’s projections, Kenneth Posner’s lighting, Michael Weber’s illusions, giant puppets, smoke effects, monster costumes, zombie cheerleaders, enormous skeletons, tiny shrunken-headed zombies, and what feels like about six thousand supernatural visual tricks, the whole production becomes this glorious sensory overload of spooky theatrical joy. Even the interval had atmosphere. Creepy music pulsed through the auditorium while green and purple lighting crawled across the walls and seating areas, making the theatre itself feel infected by the Netherworld. It’s one of the few shows where the production design continues during the break.
At the emotional centre of the show is Lydia, played superbly by Hannah Nordberg. Her grief over her mother gives the production just enough grounding to stop the madness floating away entirely. Nordberg has a stunning voice, especially during ‘Dead Mom’ and later with the beautiful ‘Home’, and she captures Lydia’s sadness without ever making the character feel self-pitying. The relationship between Lydia and her father Charles is emotionally simple but effective. He refuses to properly acknowledge the death of Lydia’s mother, while Lydia desperately wants somebody to stop pretending everything is fine. The show never tries to become a profound meditation on grief, but it gives the emotional beats enough sincerity that they land amongst the mayhem.
Amy Atkinson is hilarious as Delia, reimagined here as an utterly clueless self-help obsessed life coach. Catherine O’Hara’s film version was eccentric but intelligent. Musical Delia is gloriously thick, spouting ridiculous pseudo-spiritual nonsense like, “Sadness is like a third nipple. It’s part of you, but nobody wants to see it.” Atkinson commits completely to the silliness and absolutely nails it. She also has one hell of a powerhouse voice. Being one of the original SIX queens, she is physically incapable of sounding anything less than incredible.
One of the nicest changes from the original film is Beetlejuice’s dynamic with Adam Maitland. Rather than relentlessly perving on Barbara like in the movie, this version develops an ongoing crush on Adam that becomes one of the funniest running jokes in the show. It’s playful, weirdly sweet, slightly pervy, but ultimately much more charming than the original dynamic which basically saw a creepy old man perving on a young woman.
The first act takes a little while to fully ignite. There are moments where the energy dips slightly when it’s just Beetlejuice and the Maitlands carrying the story forward. But this is soon forgotten when Act Two arrives and the show goes absolutely feral, just as I hoped it would!
‘That Beautiful Sound’, a song about scaring people, is phenomenal. The choreography explodes into full supernatural bedlam with Beetlejuice clones, giant ensemble numbers, insane costumes, and non-stop visual madness. It was around this point that my wife actually asked me to stop tapping my foot because my enthusiastic tapping was becoming distracting. Not tapping along was a challenge in itself!
I did have a minor issue with a plot point involving the Handbook for the Recently Deceased. Beetlejuice has spent most of the show trying to keep the Maitlands away from the handbook, but then just randomly seems to hand it to Lydia in Act Two. It felt like a complete contrivance and, honestly, a little bit lazy. In a production where almost everything else is handled with such creativity and care, this moment stood out because it felt like the writers simply needed something to happen and couldn’t quite be bothered to properly justify it. It could definitely have done with another pass or just a little more explanation. Although it definitely annoyed me, I still loved the rest of the show.
The entire supporting cast is fantastic, but I have to give a special shout out to one small but fabulous role: Miss Argentina. Played by Vanessa Aurora Sierra, she arrives during the Netherworld sequences and practically blows the roof off the theatre. The vocals. The dancing. The costume. The makeup. Just sensational.
You do not come to Beetlejuice The Musical³ for airtight plotting or deep realism. You come for giant sandworms, insane quick changes, spooky spectacle, laugh-out-loud jokes, giant-headed skeletons, tiny shrunken-headed zombies, outrageous musical numbers, and a cast throwing themselves into the madness with absolute commitment. Most importantly, though, beneath all the madness, the show understands something important about Burton’s original film: that all these weird outsiders are fundamentally lonely people searching for connection.
For a musical about death, demons, ghosts, and the afterlife, Beetlejuice ends up being pretty warm-hearted. Beneath all the mayhem, spectacle, and silly jokes is a story about grief, loneliness, and people desperately trying to connect with each other. It’s hilarious, visually impressive, packed with theatrical imagination, and honestly, you should probably just go ahead and say the name three times now to see if a ticket appears. If that doesn’t work – seems likely – grab some of your best ghoul-friends and get yourselves over to the Prince Edward theatre before the run ends in April 2027.
Beetlejuice The Musical runs at The Prince Edward Theatre until 17 April 2027.
Book tickets now at beetlejuicemusical.co.uk
Words by Nick Barr
Photography by Johan Persson
