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November 21, 2024

No matter how many improvements it has made, it is stuck with the foundational problems of the film. But the chance to see two theatrical masterminds go at it for a few hours is sufficient justification for the effort.

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November 21, 2024

Death Becomes Her is a smart, brilliant adaptation that honors the original without fighting too hard at making sure it recreates every moment from the film. It’s clear the team has worked hard to put together one fun night of theatre, and boy do they deliver. I don’t think I stopped smiling from the first downbeat to the final curtain call. It’s high camp and Broadway heaven, need I say more?

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November 21, 2024

The two work together like the ingredients of a dangerous magical potion, each delivering precisely nuanced yet stupendously big performances in amounts that, were they off by so much as a fraction, would thoroughly undo the magic.

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November 21, 2024

Unlike the writers of so many new musicals on Broadway, Pennette, Mattison, Carey, and director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli know exactly what story they’re telling and for whom, making it explicit in the production number “For the Gaze,” which features Hilty executing a dizzying number of costume changes (she’s both Judy and Liza) while sugar-voiced chorus boys tap-dance around her.

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November 21, 2024

The show’s potential shelf-life looks long for New York as well as for the road, ever hungry for a hit.

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November 21, 2024

Even if the musical doesn’t have a discernible heartbeat, Hilty and Simard ensure “Death Becomes Her” stays fun and fabulous.

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November 21, 2024

After this month’s major dud, “Tammy Faye,” where “the gays” are repeatedly pandered to, it’s fun to see a show that talks one on one to its core audience.

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November 21, 2024

They have complementary approaches to pitching jokes: Hilty tends to throw them hard straight over the plate, while Simard favors curveballs. Together they make musical-comedy magic—and musical comedy, when performed this well, never gets old.

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New York Theatre Guide
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Austin
Fimmano

November 21, 2024

Hilty bursts with star power as the glamorous and self-indulged actress Madeline Ashton, and Simard’s dry delivery is hilarious in author Helen Sharp’s meeker getup — and even better after she transforms into a femme fatale to show up Ashton.

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New York Stage Review
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Frank
Scheck

November 21, 2024

The musical adaptation, newly arrived on Broadway after a Chicago tryout, is a laugh riot from start to finish, featuring superb comic performances from its two female leads, a lavish physical production that actually reflects the astronomical (reportedly $31.5 million) production cost, and a book featuring more zingy one-liners than a Friars Club Roast.

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New York Stage Review
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David
Finkle

November 21, 2024

What’s on blatant view might too quickly prompt the tandem questions, “Can you believe that—a musical version of Death Becomes Her? What’re they thinking?”

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The Guardian
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Benjamin
Lee

November 21, 2024

Death Becomes Her has been reborn on Broadway as a rousing, raucously entertaining hit, the kind of big, box-ticking blockbuster that one can see sticking around for a long time.

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Entertainment Weekly
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Dalton
Ross

November 21, 2024

The fact that the new Broadway show did away with the movie’s super campy opener of Meryl Streep’s “Me” — the film’s only musical number, incidentally — and replaced it with the even campier “For the Gaze” tells you everything you need to know about the new production and its mission to go bigger and bawdier at every turn.

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November 21, 2024

They leave us with a wink and meta-joke, a song about how they’ll never have an ending, but if they did, it might go a little like this … The conceit’s cleverly nipped and tucked, the work of fine theatrical plastic surgery, hard to dislike and ultimately—as a medical examiner might say of these women—without a heartbeat.

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