INTERVIEW: Kerry Butler, Kerry Butler, Kerry Butler is scary good in ‘Beetlejuice’
Photo: Beetlejuice stars, from left, Sophia Anne Caruso, David Josefsberg and Kerry Butler. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy / Provided by Polk & Co. with permission.
Beetlejuice, the new musical comedy on Broadway, tells the terrifyingly funny story of how the world of the living can sometimes clash with the world of the dead.
The title character, played by Alex Brightman, is a demon spirit who is looking to terrorize those souls lucky enough to be 6 feet above, including Lydia Deetz (Sophia Anne Caruso). Helping Lydia with these issues of life and death are recently deceased couple, Barbara (Kerry Butler) and Adam (David Josefsberg). Together they straddle the line between hell and earth, all the while trying to stay two steps ahead of the crafty Beetlejuice, a humorous villain whose powers are unleashed if someone says his name three times.
Butler is a beloved Broadway actor, having appeared in Mean Girls, Xanadu, Hairspray and Beauty and the Beast, among many other productions. She has been Tony-nominated and also found success on television, in such shows as 30 Rock, The Mindy Project and Rescue Me.
Her journey to the Winter Garden Theate, where Beetlejuice continues through June, has been a long, but wild ride.
“This was actually a pretty easy one,” Butler said in a recent phone interview. “They just offered me the part in the very, very first reading of it. I think it was me and Leslie [Rodriguez Kritzer] and a few other people … in that first, first reading, but of the leads, it was just me and Leslie. Then that was about two or three years ago, and then they did a bunch of workshops from then on. Then, of course, we went to D.C. to do it.”
That D.C. production led to the company setting up shop on Broadway, where reviews were solid, and sales have been brisk. (Although, it should be noted, Beetlejuice is getting bumped from the Winter Garden in 2020 to make way for The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, according to a press release.)
The show over the past two to three years has changed substantially, Butler said. The main transformation occurred when the cast was in front of an audience in D.C. The director, Alex Timbers, and the creative team heard the feedback and made some modifications.
“I thought Lydia was the audience’s eyes, and that they should see the show through her eyes,” Butler said. “She should be the most grounded person, and everybody else could be a little bit larger than life around her. And then after doing it in front of an audience, we realized that the audience really relates to the Maitlands [Barbara and Adam], and they’re the ones who can comment on Beetlejuice — like, oh yeah, we know what you’re going through, don’t worry. He’s super crazy and dirty, and we’re on your side. And it relaxes them, so I realized that I had to be less vainy and more grounded in the audience’s eyes.”
Butler said working with this creative team, including Timbers, Eddie Perfect (music and lyrics), Scott Brown and Anthony King (book), Connor Gallagher (choreography) and William Ivey Long (costume design), has been a true highlight. She found them to be equal parts amazing and collaborative.
“They would come to us and ask what we think about that,” she remembers. “They would totally be open to us saying this doesn’t feel right for my character, and I went to Alex Timbers, too, about bringing it down. Then he was always checking on me. … It’s a scary thing to completely revamp your performance when you know you’re getting laughs the other way.”
Butler had a premonition after that first reading way back when that Beetlejuice was going to be a big hit on Broadway. The music, she said, is so much fun, and she still cannot get the songs out of her head, even the ones that were ultimately dropped from the musical.
“From D.C. to New York I had a totally different song,” Butler said. “I had this really heartfelt ballad that was beautiful, and it was I felt like an important moment for Barbara. But then when we got in front of an audience, I could feel that the audience wasn’t with me. They didn’t want this big dramatic moment at this point, so then that’s how we went through three other songs before we got to ‘Barbara 2.0’ when we got to New York.”
To help her construct the Barbara role, Butler and the team developed a character biography, and she is constantly paying attention to the subtle moments in the show — moments that admittedly may go over the audience’s head, but they lead to a full-on portrait of her character.
“That’s what gives me a full life on stage,” she said. “I have all this backstory and all the things that she wants that aren’t actually in the script, but maybe they come across. Maybe they help the audience to empathize with the Maitlands. They can see, oh, they can’t have kids. That’s something they really wanted, and now they’re dead. They see this relationship with Lydia, so I hope that comes across even though it’s not on the page.”
One look at Butler’s résumé, and it becomes obvious that she is one of the preeminent performers in musical comedies on Broadway and off-Broadway. There was Rock of Ages and Little Shop of Horrors and Batboy, to name a few. Interestingly, the actor didn’t always know she had a funny bone.
“Growing up I knew I had this big, belty voice, and I was always doing ballads,” Butler remembers. “I wanted to play Annie, and I had been acting since I was a kid. Then I went away to college. I went to Ithaca College, and there I found out that I was funny. So if I hadn’t gone to college, I probably would never have done these other parts. I love that I can do these comedic roles. I love doing dramatic, too, but it’s just so much fun to make an audience laugh.”
And laughing is guaranteed at Beetlejuice. The entire theatrical package, from the acting to the scenic design to the costume design, is so over-the-top fun that children and adults are walking away with smiles over that ‘dead’-funny show they just saw.
“I’m so glad that we’ve turned into the family show,” Butler said. “Kids are so cute. For Halloween, we had so many people dressed up as all of us, all of the characters in the show. I just love that. I love that it’s dirty enough that the kids feel like they’re getting away with something, but the parents can laugh at it and think, OK, we’re not ruining their kids.”
The original movie by director Tim Burton was familiar to Butler, although she doesn’t count herself as an obsessed fan (like some of the audience members at the Winter Garden). She showed the movie to her own children, and they loved it as well.
One notion she had in the back of her mind was making her portrayal distinct from Geena Davis’ performance in the movie. Ultimately it depends on the project on whether Butler will create something anew or try to build off the source material.
“It’s always a personal choice for me as I approach the roles,” she said. “When I was playing Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu, I felt like I had to be closer to her because that was such an iconic role. She was my idol growing up, and I just felt like you can’t have Xanadu without Olivia Newton-John. And so I found the joy in my performance was in exaggerating her. That’s the way it was my own. It was Olivia Newton-John, but I was able to make fun of her. She appreciated it. She didn’t hold it against me when she came to the show, which is also another scary thing, but with Beetlejuice, I felt like the iconic roles were Beetlejuice and Lydia in a way. So I felt like I could take more liberties with the role and make it more my own.”
That performance in front of Newton-John was a nerve-wracking one, but Butler got through it and received rave reviews — even from the original Xanadu star herself.
“It was opening night, and I saw her right away in the audience,” Butler said. “I grew up obsessed with Olivia Newton-John, so I was so, so nervous. Then I saw her falling out of her seat laughing, so I felt much better.”
For now, Butler is excited to continue for several months in Beetlejuice. Although this interview occurred before the news came about the Winter Garden closure, there is still hope for many in the Broadway community that this musical will find another home and keep on living (and dying) night after night.
“Our journey has been very unique because we started out doing well, but we’ve just kind of grown and grown every week,” Butler said about the positive word of mouth. “We’re huge with tweens now. We’ve taken this alternative road to success where we’re very big with kids on Tik Tok. We have this whole huge audience of people that love the show that have never even seen the show, but are dying to see it, so it’s an interesting lesson in different ways to make it on Broadway.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Beetlejuice, featuring Kerry Butler, is currently playing the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
