Beetlejuice for Melbourne
Australian composer, writer and actor Eddie Perfect says he is "very excited to announce this morning, along with Michael Cassel Group, that Beetlejuice: The Musical The Musical The Musical will have its Australian premiere at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre in 2025! Sucks-Yes!"
Eddie told Stage Whispers a few years back the story of how he got the big gig to compose the music and write the lyrics to the musical which eventually earned him a Tony nomination.
How did it happen that an unknown Australian composer/writer with a few local credits was commissioned to write the lyrics and music to a Broadway musical adaptation of a Hollywood film, backed by a movie studio? Well … he decided to have a crack!
“My wife said buy a ticket to New York and stick around. I didn’t know anybody in New York, then Tim Minchin introduced me to his theatre writing agent. I gave him a copy of Shane Warne The Musical. He liked it even though he didn’t know anything about cricket.”
But how would he get a big New York writer to work with him?
“I heard about Beetlejuice and asked my agent if I could pitch for it. It had heavy duty Broadway producers who didn’t know my stuff – which was Australian.
“So I said, what if I wrote two songs for them for free? It wouldn’t cost them anything.”
The offer was accepted.
“I looked at the script and wrote a song for (the characters of) Lydia and Beetlejuice. The first songs you write for a musical are the hardest, when all the decisions are made. What do these characters sound like vocally and what is the sonic world of that?