DEATH BECOMES HER Opens On Broadway Starring Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard

DEATH BECOMES HER comes to life on Broadway tonight as it celebrates its opening at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in a production starring Tony Award nominees Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Christopher Sieber, and Grammy Award winner Michelle Williams. Did the critics fall under the spell of Broadway’s most glamourous new musical? Find out below!
 
Directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Christopher Gattelli, DEATH BECOMES HER features a book by Marco Pennette, and an original score by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey.  

DEATH BECOMES HER features scenic design by two-time Tony Award winner Derek McLane, costume design by Tony Award winner Paul Tazewell, lighting design by Tony Award winner Justin Townsend, sound design by Tony Award winner Peter Hylenski, hair and wig design by two-time Drama Desk Award winner Charles LaPointe, make-up design by Joe Dulude II, fight direction by Drama Desk Award winner Cha Ramos, with music supervision by Drama Desk Award winner Mary-Mitchell Campbell, orchestrations by three-time Tony Award winner Doug Besterman, music direction by Ben Cohn, dance & music arrangements by Tony Award nominee Sam Davis, vocal arrangements by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Julia Mattison & Noel Carey, music coordination by Kristy Norter, casting by Tara Rubin Casting, production stage management by Rachel Sterner, and general management by 321 Theatrical Management. Marcia Goldberg serves as Executive Producer.

Adam Feldman, Time Out New York: Death Becomes Her’s deft score, by Broadway newcomers Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, gives the performers plenty of humor to play with, along with nicely overblown strains of mystery and grandeur when called for. The book by Marco Pennette, a veteran TV comedy writer, preserves key jokes from Martin Donovan and David Koepp’s screenplay while adding solid zingers of his own—when Madeline condescendingly suggests that Helen should change jobs, she notes that being a pharmacist is “like being a doctor and a cashier”—and only minimal injections of filler. (Don’t think gay audiencewon’t notice when you crib a joke from Maggie Smith!) Pennette’s most significant changes to the story, at the end of both acts, have the salutary effect of keeping the show’s focus securely on the two main women. Sieber stops the show in a drunken and frantic second-act number, “The Plan,” but in the end this Ernest is just not important.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Where Death Becomes Her never goes wrong is where Broadway musicals rarely falter: the design departments. It’s these contributions that so frequently allow mediocre works to look like the millions of dollars the producers put up and hope to get back. Here, it’s Tazewell buoying the vehicle along with set designer Derek McLane, lighting designer Justin Townsend, sound designer Peter Hylenski, Tim Clothier’s illusions, and, definitely, hair and wig designer Charles LaPointe. They’re worth their weight in gold—or these days, cryptocurrency. OK, this is a musical, and when wishful-thinking folks decide to chase big moolah musical-wise, they usually understand the pursuit requires songs. This Death Becomes Her has ’em. Unfortunately, the Mattison-Carey score it boasts (?) resembles too many of the scores audiences presumably favor these days.