The musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s film Beetlejuice, which premiered on Broadway in 2019, will open in Seoul, South Korea, with performances set to begin in June 2021 at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.
Further details about the Korean staging will be announced at a later date.
Seoul is one of the few places to have been home to large-scale theatrical productions throughout the coronavirus pandemic, with the international tour of The Phantom of the Opera playing the city earlier this year—notably without socially distanced audience configurations but with strict sanitization protocols in place. Among the productions slated to play the Sejong Center's various stages in the coming months are Puccini's Tosca, the musical Little Women, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Written by composer Eddie Perfect and book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King, Beetlejuice opened April 25, 2019, at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre. The production earned eight Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical and nods for Perfect, Brown and King, and director Alex Timbers.
Though slated to play its final performance June 6, the musical effectively closed March 11 due to the Broadway shutdown beginning the following day. The final cast included Tony nominee Alex Brightman as the title bio-exorcist with Presley Ryan as Lydia Deetz, David Josefsberg and Kerry Butler as Adam and Barbara Maitland, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer and Adam Dannheisser as Delia and Charles Deetz, Danny Rutigliano and Jill Abramovitz as Maxie and Maxine Dean, and Kelvin Moon Loh as Otho.
The production featured choreography by Connor Gallagher, music supervision and orchestrations by Kris Kukul, sets by David Korins, costumes by William Ivey Long, lighting design by Kenneth Posner, and sound design by Peter Hylenski. Casting is by Telsey + Co’s Rachel Hoffman.
