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The fans have spoken—Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!—and their summoning spell, against all odds, has worked: The spectacularly weird musical Beetlejuice announced today that it will return to Broadway in April 2022, more than two years after its seemingly final performance on the Great White Way.
Unlike many of the shows that closed in 2020, Beetlejuice had been scheduled to end its run anyhow. It was playing at the Winter Garden Theatre, and a few soft weeks at the box office triggered a contractual clause that let the theater's landlords, the Shubert Organization, evict it to make way for the upcoming revival of The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. But the musical's popularity continued to grow, thanks in part to strong word of mouth, and by the time it closed Beetlejuice was a hit with no place to go. Campaigns to keep the show alive at a different venue seemed all but doomed by the shutdown crisis.
But if Beetlejuice—adapted by Eddie Perfect, Scott Brown and Anthony King from Tim Burton’s well-loved 1988 film—teaches us anything, it's that just because you're dead that doesn't mean you're gone. The musical, directed by Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!) and featuring a wild haunted-house set by David Korins (Hamilton), is now scheduled to start up again at the Marriott Marquis Theatre on April 8, 2022. (The venue is owned by the Nederlander Organization, not the Shubert.) Casting for the new incarnation has not yet been announced. Tickets go on sale via TicketMaster on October 1.
Beetlejuice | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy