When, within the first five minutes of a musical, one of its leading ladies launches into a flamboyant, scene-chewing, rainbow-hued production number called “For the Gaze,” there’s no mistaking the target audience. Death Becomes Her hits its mark — again and again — sometimes it even bludgeons it, but no matter. It isn’t Chekhov, despite The Seagull-esque thread of mourning one’s life.
The most expensive show to hit Broadway in the last five years, with an initial capitalization of $31.5 million, Death Becomes Her is a decadent monstrosity of a show. If you’re looking for Broadway with a capital “B,” head to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
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Here you’ll discover Megan Hilty as descending starlet Madeline Ashton and frenemy Jennifer Simard as literary wallflower Helen Sharp — two roles infamously portrayed by Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep, respectively, in the 1992 film, which won an Oscar the following year for Best Visual Effects.
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The screenplay by Martin Donovan and David Koepp offers a satirical look at our quest for eternal youth. Despite its star power, a creepy male gaze pervades, which isn’t necessarily remedied in Marco Pennette’s book for the musical. Death Becomes Her’s one-note commentary that beauty is only skin deep hasn’t evolved much in 30 years, yet the queers still embrace the movie for those camp performances, early CGI effects, and one-liners, many of which worm their way into the musical (As Madeline sings to Helen post abdominal blow-out: “You’re a walking lie and I can see right through you!”)
That’s a tough act to follow, but the illusions by Tim Clothier, whose 20-year career has included collaborations with David Copperfield, Cirque du Soliel, and Blue Man Group, feel decidedly theatrical. Can you expect a twisted neck, a talking severed head, and a gaping hole in Helen’s stomach? Absolutely. But Death Becomes Her’s finest displays of hubris come when director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli and fight director Cha Ramos get in on the action.
Madeleine’s famous tumble down the stairs, here realized in an epically staged slow-motion extravaganza with an uncredited stunt double, is the kind of high-octane antics Broadway audiences crave.
Will you remember Julia Matison and Noel Carey’s score? Save the 11 o’clock power ballad “Alive Forever,” not likely. Michelle Williams, who rose to fame alongside Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland in Destiny’s Child, steps into a reimagined iteration of Isabella Rossellini’s sorceress, here named Viola Van Horn. Costumed within an inch of her eternal life by Paul Tazewell, Williams gets a few big numbers to show off with an ensemble of slinky immortals, including “Live to Serve,” which lives up to its name.
An always reliable Christopher Sieber as Ernest Menville is left to stitch the women together, figuratively and literally, as the nebbish lover caught in the crossfire. It’s painfully obvious when he steps downstage for a solo and a backdrop descends close to his heels that it’s a structural necessity for something even more fabulous to be revealed.
No matter. Death Becomes Her knows what it is. In a season of bigger-than-life women — Norma Desmond and Tammy Faye Bakker among them — Helen and Madeleine are familiar archetypes. And they don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.
Death Becomes Her plays on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Tickets are available here.
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