A perfect rejoinder to the ubiquitous Broadway Sucks These Days gripe about the too-many movie-to-stage adaptations has arrived at long last, and it’s a simple three-word response: Death Becomes Her. A virtually perfect big-budget, broad-appeal musical comedy that improves in every way over the 1992 film, director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s wildly entertaining vehicle for two of our best singer-actor-comedians on any stage today renders the movie-as-source snipe worthless.
Don’t waste a minute’s thought on which of the two – Megan Hilty or Jennifer Simard – come out on top with this delight of a holiday gift (let Tony voters lose sleep over that one next spring). 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.
And singling out Hilty and Simard certainly isn’t meant to diminish their costar Christopher Sieber, who more than keeps pace even in the less showy role of a milquetoast husband. He’s terrific.
So a refresher about the ’92 movie. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, with a script by David Koepp and Martin Donovan, the film starred Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as longtime frenemeies, with Streep playing the vainglorious Broadway actress Madeline Ashton and Hawn her plain-jane writer friend Helen Sharp, the underdog from whom the greedy Madeline steals everything, even, at last, a handsome fiancé just because she can. The years-long feud eventually leads the two women to, individually, seek out a magic eternal youth and beauty potion that each believes will provide the ultimate one-upsmanship advantage over her rival.
At the time of its release, the film was a box office hit but, for viewers, a bit of forgettable here today-gone tomorrow, at least until years later when it was embraced as a cult favorite by the LGBTQ+ community.
It would not be an understatement to suggest that the gay community pointed the way to a Broadway hit – now there’s a shocker – with the Death Becomes Her team, including Gattelli, book writer Marco Pennette, music writers Julia Mattison & Noel Carey, the cast and the designers taking free rein to boldly imagine a campy, over-the-top universe Zemeckis barely imagined. This is a musical that grabs its audience by the jugular fast and doesn’t let go. Hilty’s Madeline stars in a concert show “Me! Me! Me!” that features a boisterous opening number titled “For The Gaze,” and any doubt of its double meaning is put to rest when this hardest working woman in show biz quick-changes into Liza, Judy and Julie Andrews from Victor/Victoria.
Christopher Sieber
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
The musical’s energy rarely lets up from there. Even after Madeline steals Helen’s beau Ernest Menville (Sieber, who, unlike Bruce Willis in the movie is not a mortician but rather a high-end plastic surgeon, one of the musical’s many improvements), sending Simard’s maniacally resentful writer-wannabe to the madhouse, only the sound levels diminish, not the laughs: Simard, so very, very funny in Broadway’s most recent Company (which costarred Sieber), does a girlish, sing-songy Baby Jane-esque loony tune before dropping to a sinister whisper with “Madeline needs to be dead.”
That might not read so funny, but in Simard’s execution, it slays.
As the two rivals carry on their hatreds through the years, each plotting and planning against the other, they separately happen upon the secret to eternally youthful life: a potion devised by the mysterious, maybe-witch Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams, formerly of Destiny’s Child), who lives in a huge, cathedral-like lair (all done up in purples and blacks, just one of the show’s many gorgeous collaborations by scenic designer Derek McLane and lighting designer Justin Townsend).
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Viola sings (backed up by her ever-present chorus of “immortals” attired by costume designer Paul Tazewell in stunning flesh-toned body suits tattoo-striped with glittery, purple swirls).
Michelle Williams
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Anyone who saw the movie knows full-well what that warning entails: Everlasting life means that the bodies of the undead will carry every gash and break and shotgun hole acquired through uncareful living. For the always-battling Madeline and Helen, that’s some serious scaring: Madeline, shoved down the Sunset Boulevard-style mansion stairs by Helen, ends up with an Exorcist-level head twist in one of the show-stopping illusions designed by Tim Clothier; the less said, the better the surprise, but that slow-mo, twisted-limb stair-tumble is a stunner, perhaps topped only by an even funnier moment when a swung shovel sends a particular body part sailing off the stage.
Dressed in one outrageously glam gown after another, Hilty and Simard give two of the funniest performances this side of Oh, Mary!, and their powerhouse vocals – combined or solo – take Death Becomes Her to the rafters and back. Again, good luck to those Tony voters.
‘Death Becomes Her’ illusions were created by Tim Clothier
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
And what fine musical material they have to work with. Mattison and Carey have concocted a knock-’em-dead collection of killer songs that send up show tune convention while celebrating each and every one with love and care. From the razzle-dazzle of “For The Gaze” and Viola’s spooky “If You Want Perfection” and on to the anthemic “Alive Forever,” the songs are pure ear candy, the lyrics smart and sharp. Sieber gets his own big number with a drunken, falling-apart bit of desperation called “The Plan,” while Williams, whose sinewy R&B pop vocals are pleasing even without the assured belting capacity of her costars, gets her best moment in the slinky “Don’t Say I Didn’t (Warn You).”
With too many other grace notes to enumerate, some demand mentioning: Charles LaPointe’s eye-popping hair and wig design, Joe Dulude II’s make-up design, Cha Ramos’ fight direction, Doug Besterman’s orchestrations and, not least, a frequent scene-stealer of a performance by Josh Lamon as Madeline’s put-upon assistant Stefan, a sort of amalgam of Thelma Ritter in All About Eve, Robert Michael Morris’ Mickey Deane in Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback and just about any character played by Dwight Frye.
After treating the divas to a lovely performance on harp, the gofer can’t resist a bit of braggadocio. “Top of my class at Juilliard,” Stefan says, followed by a slight pause and then, “Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go clean cat puke out of a Birkin bag.”
In this life-force of a musical, even the help gets to shine like so many sequins on a prima donna’s finery.
Title: Death Becomes Her
Venue: Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Director/Choreographer: Christopher Gattelli
Book: Marco Pennette
Music: Julia Mattison & Noel Carey
Cast: Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Christopher Sieber and Michelle Williams, with Marija Abney, Lauren Celentano, Sarita Colon, Kaleigh Cronin, Natalie Charle Ellis, Taurean Everett, Michael Graceffa, Neil Haskell, Kolton Krouse, Josh Lamon, Sarah Meahl, Ximone Rose, Sir Brock Warren, Bud Weber, Ryan Worsing, and Warren Yang
Running time: 2 hr 30 min (including intermission)
