Megan Hilty knows how to make a first impression. In her opening number in the new movie-inspired musical Death Becomes Her, playing the self-centered actress Madeline Ashton, she delivers a rousing, uproarious rendition of an old-timey Broadway spectacle complete with six costume changes, modulated high notes, even higher kicks, and impressions of everyone from Liza Minnelli to Judy Garland. “While serving ‘Cleopatra’ on a chaise, I’ll give you choreo and legs for days,” she sings in a bouncy song wittily titled “For the Gaze.” The number, part of a Broadway show titled “Me Me Me,” is a showstopping kickoff to one of the funniest shows to hit the stage in years.
Hilty is a hoot as Madeline, a starlet nearing middle-aged obsolescence in youth-obsessed Hollywood (first embodied by Meryl Streep in Robert Zemeckis’s 1992 film). And Jennifer Simard matches Hilty in snarky putdowns as her longtime frenemy, Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn in the film), a one-time aspiring actress who plots to steal back her former fiancé, a fickle plastic surgeon named Ernest (Christopher Sieber) who runs off with Madeline early on.
Marco Pennette’s screenplay adaptation, which packs in more punchlines per minute than a Jake Paul boxing match, hands its two heroines some deliciously vicious exchanges. Helen notes that she gave up acting “when I saw how talented Mad was. No one could throw their legs wider — higher — than her.” Madeline responds by suggesting that Helen pursue a less ambitious career: “Like maybe be a school bus driver? Or a pharmacist. That’s like being a doctor and a cashier.”
Soon, both women succumb to the seductive temptations of the mysterious Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child, who looks ravishing but seems genuinely ill at ease on stage). She’s a goth diva surrounded by a chorus of youthful acolytes who offers a magical elixir that grants eternal youth — but comes with more strings than a violin factory. Like the fact that they’re impervious to death but not dismemberment. And that’s to say nothing of the price tag, which prompts Madeline to sputter in a wonderful self-own: “This is more than I paid to keep my sex tape online.”
This is the second overproduced FX-laden Robert Zemeckis film to become an overproduced, FX-laden Broadway in the last two years (Back to the Future just announced its post-holiday closing after an 18-month run). And Death Becomes Her, which opened Thursday at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, looks like it has spent every bit of its reported $31.5 million budget. Christopher Gattelli’s production features some of the most impressive stagecraft Broadway has ever seen (credit Derek McLane’s elaborate sets, Justin Townsend’s cinematic lighting, Paul Tazewell’s over-the-top costumes, and Tim Clothier’s illusions). The producers even drafted the original film’s Viola, the ageless Isabella Rossellini, to deliver the pre-show announcement.
The creative team manages to re-create many of the film’s most memorable set-pieces, including Madeline’s fateful tumble down a long and winding staircase, her Exorcist-like neck twist, and even Helen taking a rifle shot to her stomach to leave a gaping, smoke-emitting hole. Some of the best bits are original to the show. In an Act 2 solo for Sieber’s frazzled plastic surgeon, he searches for tools in his basement man cave that might help him reassemble the undead women in his life — only to have the room itself morph into a very animated backup chorus.
There’s also the welcome addition of Stefan (Josh Lamon), a swishy, sycophantic Juilliard grad who toils as Madeline’s personal assistant and underscores his boss’s unrepentant narcissism. (His exit lines include: “Excuse me I have to go clean cat puke out of a Birkin bag.”)
But aside from “All About the Gaze” at the top of the show, you may wonder if these characters really need to break into song — or if Death Becomes Her should be a musical at all. Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s score is an old-school homage to musical theater traditions that makes up in lyrical laugh lines what it lacks in memorable melodies. (It helps that the music sounds so lush with an 18-member orchestra, under Ben Cohn’s direction.)
This may be the one musical where you really might exit humming the set — but you’ll also remember the rapier-sharp repartee between Hilty and Simard, who lean into the material’s catty campiness with hilarious results. Simard’s Helen isn’t the only one who’s busting a gut at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. In addition, Hilty’s playfulness extends to her bio in the Playbill, where her credits are lifted directly from Streep’s résumé aside from a lone authentically Hilty TV credit, Smash, and the Streep-centric Instagram handle @ThisIsTotallyMegansRealBio. It’s a deft touch for a show that defies expectations in its all-out assault on the funny bone. ★★★★☆
DEATH BECOMES HER
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes (with intermission)
Tickets on sale through May 25
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