Kristen Beth Williams as Helen Sharp and Ken Marino as Ernest Menville in the North American Tour of Death Becomes Her. Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade. Courtesy of the Fabulous Fox
– By Cate Marquis –
“Death Becomes Her” continues the Fox’s wonderful “spooky season” fall, with a hilarious musical comedy adaptation of the 1992 film by Robert Zemeckis starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. This Tony Award-winning Broadway musical comedy adaptation, which runs Oct. 13 – 25, 2026, is packed with laughs and dazzling old Hollywood-style dance numbers with glittering costumes, wonderful sets and some really impressive stunts and special effects. It is a perfect show for the Halloween season, with its spooky life-after-death story, entertaining action, colorful characters, plentiful costumes and lots and lots of laughs.
The show opens with a spooky dance extravaganza built around magical, mysterious Viola Van Horn
(Nasia Thomas), offering up a potion that has the power to restore youth but at a price, while her immortals, garbed in body suits with strategically-placed strips of black, dance around her.
This dazzling song-and-dance number is immediately followed by another, even more dazzling one. We meet one of the main characters, beautiful star Madeline Ashton (Jackie Burns), in a medley of numbers from her current Broadways show “Me, Me, Me!,” a big splashy production number filled with multiple sequined costume changes and references to old Busby Berkeley movies, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland movies.
After this entertaining double opening, we find star Madeline Ashton behind the scenes with her overworked assistant Chagall (Louis Williams Jr.), as she awaits the arrival of her long-time best friend Helen Sharp (Kristen Beth Williams). But vain and self-absorbed Madeline’s main reason for maintaining the old friendship seems to be to gloat over her non-famous, mousy friend’s ordinariness and lack of romantic success, and things he moved into frenemy territory.
When Helen shows up, she has news that dismays Madeline: she’s engaged. Her fiance, Ernest Menville (Ken Marino) is rather nerdy guy who does work with non-profits, but he is also a gushing fan of Madeline’s work. Madeline is ready to dismiss him as unimportant, until she learns he is a plastic surgeon, who uses his considerable skills to help disadvantaged kids instead of well-off aging beauties.
Suddenly interested, Madeline invites the couple to her home where she goes after Ernest, um, in earnest. As she has in the past, she wins and ends up marrying him, with the song and dance number “Madeline Ashton’s Intimate Wedding Extravaganza,” and leaving Helen devastated.
The songs are perfect as well, fun and silly, adding sparkle and more humor to the show rather slowing down the action. In the first act, beside the movie-reference packed opening extravaganza, where Madeline’s selfish nature and bit ego is on full display. The song “That Was Then, This is Now” covers the changing friendship and Madeline’s plans. The duet between Ernest and Helen before that go to Madeline’s home, “Tell Me, Ernest” has Helen seeking reassurance from him that Madeline won’t steal him away, as she has with so many previous beaus, although he still succumbs.
The second act has some amazing stunt work and effects, particularly with a spectacular fall down a flight of stairs. The whole sequence manages to reference both Alfred Hitchcock movies and Frankenstein, with the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the curved staircase fading to Gothic spooky black and white images as a backdrop of the slo-mo fall. Jackie Burns secretly slips off stage at the top of the stairs to be replaced with similarly-dressed stunt-double David Houle, a dancer in the production numbers, who does an amazing athletic, slow-mo tumble all the way down the long staircase. It is as impressive a piece of stage effects as you are likely to see, as well as spot-on prefect for the comic-scary tale.
The cast are all just great, getting every drop of humor out of the spooky, silly melodrama plot and camping things up in just the right way. Jackie Burns as Madeline is over-the-top ego and Kristen Beth Williams’s Helen becomes the mouse that roared when she takes revenge on her old frenemy, and together that make a perfect comedy team. Nasia Thomas, surrounded by her slinky minions, is wonderfully witch-y.
The dance ensembles deserve special mention, with very entertaining athletic, modern dance performances that included a sense of character to performances.
The musical comedy “Death Becomes Her” exceeds the movie in pure fun and comic entertainment, a very rare achievement. The songs, the comedy plot, and mix of stunting and a little slapstick, makes this supernatural fantasy and great deal of spoofing fun, filled with more laughs than you expect.
“Death Becomes Her” is on stage at the Fabulous Fox through Oct. 25, 2026.
© Cate Marquis
