That's the spirit: Hauntingly hilarious 'Beetlejuice the Musical' brings heart and soul

WORCESTER - Our story opens on a scene played out many times in made-for-TV movies of a bygone decade: a black-clad entourage clustered around a casket just before its interment. Surely, something momentous is about to happen. How could it be otherwise, when a beloved person has died, namely one Emily Deetz.

As beings conscious of our eventual end, we want to know what awaits us. In this version, what awaits us is a host of zany ghouls dressed in tattered black-and-white stripes and an eternally kooky party, which the thematic dirge relates as "the whole dead thing!"

So begins "Beetlejuice the Musical," the Broadway show based on Tim Burton's 1988 film, whose spirits, phantoms, and ferocious (but adorable) sandworm have swarmed to The Hanover Theatre & Conservatory for the Performing Arts, as witnessed at the Jan. 4 show.

Now, if you're already a fan of "Beetlejuice," and your fandom has roots in the film, you'll delight to see all your favorite characters leaping to, well, "life" once more. But you can only anticipate part of the plot's arc, and only a few of the catchphrases, most especially, "I myself am strange and unusual."

That's the motto of Lydia Deetz, Emily's gloomy teen daughter, still mourning her mother, to the consternation of her father, Charles, a real estate developer, and Charles' new girlfriend, Delia, a vapid life coach prone to ditzy poses and pronouncements of toxic positivity. (Did you know the word "success" has "yes" in it? Well, now you do. Try saying it out loud, and see if it gets the desired effect of filling people around you with instant cheer.)

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Lydia's grief and penchant for goth chick couture fill Charles and Delia with worry about the impression it will make on well-heeled friends and clients. (A note about the goth chick couture: If that's your jam, you will envy every single black-lace gown and twirling black umbrella. It's a fashion feast of sumptuous indulgence.)

Charles has purchased and refurbished an unprepossessing house where, until a recent electrocution, dwelled Adam and Barbara, a pleasant couple who tried to enrich themselves with hobbies, crafts and adult education classes featuring wine even when not focused on wine.

Into this vale of tears leaps Beetlejuice — a green-haired, grimy, bug-eyed demon, prowling, howling and bellowing more-than-suggestive punchlines that will leave a few mandibles lying on the theater floor. "I'm invisible and powerless," Beetlejuice laments. "Like a gay Republican!"

Such unapologetically snappy lines permeate the entire show, with pokes at self-proclaimed New Age gurus, Wiccans and zingers bordering on an R rating, or at least a PG-13 one. It's all in the nature of things: Beetlejuice wants desperately to exert a greater influence on the mortal realm, but he needs help in order to do it.

Lydia, alienated from everyone and in search of acceptance, unwittingly plays into his designs but quickly catches him out, with the help of Adam and Barbara, who in turn are trying to frighten away their home's new inhabitants.

All the characters find themselves on a journey that defies all physical and metaphysical dimensions, with a game show, newly-deceased football stars, a disgruntled beauty queen, an underworld hypermanaged by a cantankerous bureaucrat, and breathtaking sets, scenery and effects. Burtonesque-stylized imagery illuminates everything, so get ready for lots of lurid purple, black-and-white geometric patterns and intense neon green, all in morbid whimsy.

(This is an experience that actually begins in the lobby, with floral arranges of black calla lilies, and merch for the true "Beetlejuice" lover, including sandworm plushies. It's true immersion, and deliciously so.)

But there is not one moment of "dead" air, and there are no "background" characters. Every performer, from the main cast to the ensemble dancers, gleams with electric energy, with each step and each line delivered with razor-sharp timing.

There's also quite a bit of self-referential humor. When Emily reluctantly concedes to marry Beetlejuice to placate him, their wedding song waxes appalled that someone ever thought a horribly inappropriate pairing could be rationalized.

For all the hilarity, there's a great deal of gravitas. A journey to Hades plays out much like that of Odysseus. And in the most touching moment, we see a father and daughter who have both lost something precious and who are struggling, just in different ways.

If you've lost someone vital and irreplaceable, you will get this part, and the comedy, music and dazzle will no make no pretense of diminishing it. This one's for the living — who might find in it a few tears, and an unexpected healing balm.

"Beetlejuice'' runs through Jan. 7 at The Hanover Theatre & Conservatory for the Perfmoring Arts, 2 Southbridge St., Worcester. Tickets $35.40 to $119. Call (877) 571-7469 or visit thehanovertheatre.org.

This article originally appeared on Worcester Magazine: Haunted, hilarious and heartfelt, 'Beetlejuice' captivates mortals