Robert Zemeckis’s Death Becomes Her was always a guilty pleasure for me. Watching Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn search for eternal beauty and life and then, once dead, fight it out Dynasty-style while tossing semi-witty barbs at each other was a campy thrill. I was bored by the Bruce Willis nonsense but then Isabella Rossellini was on hand as a wonderfully weird and wacky sorceress of sorts. The Oscar-winning (for Visual Effects) film has become a cult favorite, especially in the queer community.
And, nowadays, every single film ever made, regardless of merit, is being adapted for the stage. This one proved curious, though, since the relationship between Mad & Hell (to diehards) definitely had Broadway Diva potential but the plot relies heavily on visual and makeup effects and action-adventure sequences. Would the creatives find a more theatrical way to tell this story on stage. And would the songs be character revealing and move the plot along.
The answers to the above questions are not really and yes, sort of. But the end result is still a terrifically entertaining, zany and hilarious satire about two vain rivals who desperately seek their own fountain of youth and, because of their own enlarged egos, end up spending eternity together.
The basic plot sees aging film and stage star and glorious narcissist Madeline Ashford (Megan Hilty) desperately trying to remain relevant in a world that sees women past 40 as obsolete (a theme also being explored and decimated in the Demi Moore body horror bloodbath, The Substance). Her old friend, discontented writer Helen Sharp (Jennifer Simard) and her geeky plastic surgeon fiancé, Ernest Menville (Christopher Sieber) attend one of Mad’s ridiculously silly Broadway performances (think Liza on crack) and before you can say, “Now, a warning,” Mad has snatched up Ernest for herself, making Hell pretty miserable and bent on revenge.
What happens next you either know from the film or you should let magically happen onstage since the effects are startlingly effective and include a wild fall down a flight of stairs and a remarkable beheading. Illusions by Tim Clothier.
The creatives are led by Broadway newbie Marco Pennette penning a fabulously witty book. Structurally, though, he makes the same mistake too many other film-to-musical stage adaptation book writers make and that is sticking too closely to the film, almost trying to carbon-copy certain scenes instead of realizing it’s a different medium and that audiences appreciate innovation. Perhaps his hands were tied because of the Universal Theatrical Group powers-that-be. He does, however, play it smart when it comes to famous lines from the film, regurgitating the very few classics but then coming up with many fantabulous zingers of his own, that surpass those in the 1992 original screenplay (by Martin Donovan and David Koepp).
The songs, by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, are old-fashioned-hummable, diva belt-able, cleverly satirical and sometimes even memorable. See what I did there?
I could have lived without the 11th hour Ernest number, but that’s because whenever Mad & Hell aren’t onstage, you just long for their return.
Director and choreographer extraordinaire, Christopher Gattelli, keeps things moving at a nice, brisk pace and accentuates the comedy over all else, a smart choice. He is also very savvy about tapping into his gay audience’s sensibility. A Mad song titled, “For the Gaze,” with that last word having the obvious double meaning, is a highlighted example. (the line at the men’s room and banter at intermission proved just how many “gaze” attended my performance.)
Costumes (by Paul Tazewell), Sets (by Derek McLane), Orchestrations (by Doug Besterman) and Lighting (Justin Townsend) all brilliantly serve the production.
But I buried the lead because this show truly soars because of the insanely talented actors playing Mad and Hell, Hilty and Simard. Both continuously one-up the other in the most spectacular of ways so as an audience member you are suffering from a confused yet fabulous whiplash, not sure who you have fallen in love/hate with more but delighting in the wickedness of it all. Both are very different in their diva-icious approaches, but a perfect pair, nonetheless, side-splittingly funny one moment, incredibly poignant the next. Simard and Hilty give Death Becomes Her it’s raison d’etre and your raison d’shell-out-beaucoup bucks.
Death Becomes Her is currently playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in NYC.
For tickets visit: https://deathbecomesher.com
