‘Beetlejuice’ Broadway Review: It’s Showtime, Ready Or Not

Maybe if they’d said it a fourth time. Three times – “Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!” – summons to life the stripe-coated, fright-wigged demon that made a superstar of Michael Keaton way back when. Could a fourth have magically conjured that extra something needed to transform Broadway’s Beetlejuice into something beyond the realm of good enough? Directed by the busy and talented Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), a long-in-the-making musical comedy Beetlejuice, based, faithfully if not enough, on Tim Burton’s 1988 film opens tonight at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre. There’s plenty worth a haunt here, from David Korins’ off-kilter spook house set to Alex Brightman’s raspy-voiced title performance and, most of all, the deliriously gorgeous singing of young Sophia Anne Caruso, and it all comes within reasonable reach of exorcising the bad vibes that attached themselves to the production during its pre-Broadway run in Washington D.C. But diminished expectations can lift a spirit only so far.