'Death Becomes Her' stage musical a charming affair needing just a few wrinkles ironed out

Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Society’s worship of youth — or at least the appearance thereof — is nothing new. Centuries before vampire facials and house-call Botox, the explorer Ponce de Leon sent Europe into a tizzy when he purported to locate the fountain of youth in Florida. To this day, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries are still searching.

Hollywood spoofed its own and the world’s eternal obsession with anti-aging in 1992’s “Death Becomes Her,” the hilariously gruesome and campy movie inspiration for the Broadway-bound musical of the same name that served up its world premiere Sunday evening at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.

Running through June 2, “Death Becomes Her” the musical retains the camp and amps up the irony of the movie. But as directed by Christopher Gattelli, the musical tale of two frenemies and their quest to remain forever young falls short in two key elements: The larger issue is that like the movie, the musical never addresses why self-involved actress Madeline Ashton (Megan Hilty) and novelist Helen Sharp (Jennifer Simard) have such a phobic horror of wrinkles, sags and hand moles. There’s not enough depth to flesh out a satisfying story of their crippling fear of aging.

The other problem lies with the show's special effects. One of the things that made the movie so entertaining was its depiction of monstrous human decay as it manifested on the leading ladies (played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn). On stage, the musical’s depiction of human decrepitude runs the gamut from “meh” to underwhelming.

When Madeline downs a magic anti-aging potion proffered by mysterious sorceress Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams), there’s no transformation, just a weird series of close-up projections of her lips and eyes flickering in her makeup mirror. When a tussle with Helen results in Madeline breaking her neck, the injury manifests as a prosthetic that looks like it came from a Spirit of Halloween store.

Helen's decay is similarly unimpressive. When her skin needs a fresh coat of spray paint, you have to take Helen's word for it because she looks like a Lancome ad throughout. After a shotgun blast straight through her gut, Helen’s front is mildly scorched and smoking, but when she turns around, it looks like somebody simply sewed a black circle onto the back of her gown and called it a day.

Still, there’s plenty of humor in composers/lyricist Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s score and Marco Pennette’s book. (Listen for the latter’s hysterical call-out to “Sunset Boulevard,” a far earlier Hollywood take on female aging.) To its benefit, the musical veers significantly from the film in its treatment of Viola (named Lisle in the movie) and Ernest (Christopher Sieber), Helen's feckless fiance.

Williams’ Viola launches the musical with verve, rising from the orchestra pit like Venus from a clam shell, draped in a cloud of sparkles and Maleficent-black draping. With “If You Want Perfection” she delivers a star turn, emanating sinister glamor and bravura belting as her crew of “ Immortals” beautifully deliver Gattelli’s alternately spiky and sinuous choreography. Viola also gets the last word in a scene that cleverly shows that even the silence of the grave can’t silence the world’s clamor for eternal youth.

As for Ernest, he’s mostly a comic foil rather than a long-term wedge in Helen and Madeline’s frenemyship. He doesn’t cause Helen and Madeline’s bruising and competitive jealousies so much as he exacerbates them.

Mattison and Carey’s score is winning if not especially memorable. Hilty’s pun-tastic, homonymic showstopper “For the Gaze” threads the needle between sincerity and satire in a tune that features cameos from Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli as Madeline's ego swells with the power of audience adulation, and “the gaze” that made her a star. Simard brings a hilarious deadpan sense of the absurd to Helen, whether she’s unleashing a lifetime of pent-up grievances in the comically venomous “Madeline,” or swinging a shovel at Madeline’s skull.

“Death Becomes Her” also looks terrific. Set designer Derek McLane’s sweeping art-deco-meets-Gothic arches provide a lush frame for rich, predominant purples that lighting designer Justin Townshend often utilizes to bathe the stage. (Watch for the neon-sign shout-out to Meryl Streep in Helen's book party scene.)

As polished as it all looks, Gattelli needs to revisit the special effects needed to make the stakes of “Death Becomes Her” really matter. While the show is entertaining, like cosmetic fillers and face lifts, it’s only skin deep.