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‘Death Becomes Her’ Review: Promising Pre-Broadway Musical Makes for a Campy Improvement on the Cult Film
Going for the camp jugular brings risks, but Hilty an Simard put forth the teamwork, timing, and ribald titillation to make it work.
A more-than-respectable entry in the endless parade of movies-to-musicals, this genuinely funny, effervescently performed pre-Broadway take on the 1992 Robert Zemeckis dark comedy “ Death Becomes Her ” has a better, and more sympathetic, understanding of the female vanity and rivalry at its core — and their underlying camp qualities — than the original film ever did. Book writer Marco Pennette (showrunner on “Ugly Betty”) makes many smart choices in this adaptation, starting with Michelle Williams (still most famous for her time with Destiny’s Child) in the Rossellini role, singing to us that, “I have a secret you would die for.” Dressed in a glam black gown with a stand-up collar worthy of Cruella DeVille, she arrives surrounded by a bevy of scantily clad dancers. Rather than spending too much time on Ernest’s efforts to escape taking the potion, which the film did, Pennette gets us more quickly and lastingly to the eternal post-death-but-still-going frenemy-ship of the women, which reaches a crescendo with the 11 o’clock number “Alive Forever.” It brings significant echoes of “For Good” from “Wicked,” just as so much else here strives for the Elphaba-Glinda connection.
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