• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
November 21, 2024 8:58 pm

Death Becomes Her: The Rare Screen-to-Stage Musical That Improves on the Original

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard play the dueling divas in this musical adaptation of the hit 1992 comedy-fantasy film.

Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard in Death Becomes Her. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

The more movie-to-stage musical adaptations that I see, and I’m seeing a lot, the more I get the feeling that a key ingredient has been left out. Well, not so much left out as glossed over. Whether it’s The Notebook or Back to the Future or seemingly countless others, the creatives seem to spend a lot of effort recreating iconic moments (That kiss in the rain! The flying car!) and dialogue from the films, and the barest minimum on the score. As in the main reason theatrical musicals exist in the first place.

The latest example is Death Becomes Her, which actually manages the neat trick of being superior to the 1992 fantasy film starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. The musical adaptation, newly arrived on Broadway after a Chicago tryout, is a laugh riot from start to finish, featuring superb comic performances from its two female leads, a lavish physical production that actually reflects the astronomical (reportedly $31.5 million) production cost, and a book featuring more zingy one-liners than a Friars Club Roast. The only thing missing are memorable songs, but fortunately the show is so entertaining you’ll find yourself not minding very much.

Not that the songs by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey (as in, who?) are bad, mind you. They’re serviceable, sometimes slightly more than that, and if the tunes don’t get stuck in your head, the lyrics will make you laugh continuously. Especially as delivered by Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, who play the central roles of Madeline Ashton, a diva actress battling the ravaging effects of growing older, and her frenemy Helen Sharp, who finally finds happiness in the form of marriage to plastic surgeon Ernest Melville (a very funny Christopher Sieber), only to have it snatched away when Madeline steals her man.

[Read David Finkle’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]

What ultimately unites the two women is not their bond to Ernest, who, we learn, is the good kind of plastic surgeon specializing in “burn victims and children with cleft palates,” but their succumbing to the temptation of achieving eternal youth. That’s provided by the sorceress Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams, formerly of Destiny’s Child, whose theater credits include Aida, The Color Purple, and Chicago), whose stable of hard-bodied scantily clad “Immortals” are visual evidence of her powers.

Unfortunately, being immortal comes with its share of bodily complications, especially since the rivalry between the two women results in extreme violence, including a bone-breaking fight on a palatial staircase, a severed head, and a gunshot wound in the stomach that produces a hole so large that you could stick a fist through it. Those and more slapstick moments from the film are recreated onstage to hilarious effect, especially that staircase brawl (featuring a very talented stunt performer, not-so-convincingly outfitted with a blond wig).

Another of the show’s highlights is the number “The Plan” (sadly, one of only two solely accorded to Sieber), in which the paraphernalia in his workshop, including a vintage Farrah Fawcett poster, comes to riotous life.

Ultimately, it’s the book by Marco Pennette, much funnier than the film’s screenplay, that provides the lion’s share of the show’s pleasures, with Hilty and Simard exchanging so many pricelessly bitchy one-liners it’s no wonder that the lines are longer for the men’s room than the women’s. Both actresses knock it out of the park, and if Simard proves the funnier, especially with her line readings and facial expressions, it’s probably only because her character is less one-dimensional.

Sieber provides solid support even if he’s largely confined to the role of straight man for much of the time, and Josh Lamon is a hoot as Madeline’s put-upon assistant (strangely, he’s only listed as part of the ensemble despite playing a significant supporting character). Williams delivers more of a presence than a performance, but what a presence it is, and her vocals, not surprisingly, prove thrilling, especially in the opening number “If You Want Perfection.”

Derek McLane has provided the sort of lavish sets, including for Madeline’s mansion and Viola’s lair, that you don’t often see much anymore on Broadway; Paul Tazewell’s costumes and Charlies LaPointe’s hair and wig designs practically deserve a show of their own; and director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli has staged the fast-paced proceedings with the high energy this sort of madcap farce demands. It turns out that Death Becomes Her becomes Broadway.

Death Becomes Her opened November 21, 2024 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Tickets and information: deathbecomesher.com

About Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck has been covering film, theater and music for more than 30 years. He is currently a New York correspondent and arts writer for The Hollywood Reporter. He was previously the editor of Stages Magazine, the chief theater critic for the Christian Science Monitor, and a theater critic and culture writer for the New York Post. His writing has appeared in such publications as the New York Daily News, Playbill, Backstage, and various national and international newspapers.

Primary Sidebar

Creditors: Strindberg Updated, For Better and Worse

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff, and Justice Smith star in Jen Silverman's adaptation of Strindberg's classic drama.

Creditors: Love, Marriage, and Maddening Mind Games

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★☆☆ Ian Rickson directs the rarely performed Strindberg work, with a refresh from playwright Jen Silverman

Goddess: A Myth-Making, Magical New Musical

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ A luminous Amber Iman casts a spell in an ambitious Kenya-set show at the Public Theater

Lights Out, Nat King Cole: Smile When Your Heart Is Breaking

By Frank Scheck

★★★☆☆ Dule Hill plays the title role in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor's play with music, exploring Nat King Cole's troubled psyche.

CRITICS' PICKS

Dead Outlaw: Rip-Roarin’ Musical Hits the Bull’s-Eye

★★★★★ David Yazbek’s brashly macabre tuner features Andrew Durand as a real-life desperado, wanted dead and alive

Just in Time Christine Jonathan Julia

Just in Time: Hello, Bobby! Darin Gets a Splashy Broadway Tribute

★★★★☆ Jonathan Groff gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Grammy-winning “Beyond the Sea” singer

John Proctor Is the Villain cast

John Proctor Is the Villain: A Fearless Gen Z Look at ‘The Crucible’

★★★★★ Director Danya Taymor and a dynamite cast bring Kimberly Belflower’s marvelous new play to Broadway

Good Night, and Good Luck: George Clooney Makes Startling Broadway Bow

★★★★★ Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their 2005 film to reflect not only the Joe McCarthy era but today

The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Masterpiece from Page to Stage

★★★★★ Succession’s Sarah Snook is brilliant as everyone in a wild adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s prophetic novel

Operation Mincemeat: A Comical Slice of World War II Lore

★★★★☆ A screwball musical from London rolls onto Broadway

Sign up for new reviews

Copyright © 2025 • New York Stage Review • All Rights Reserved.

Website Built by Digital Culture NYC.