Death Becomes Her Broadway Reviews

I don’t think the musical has to worry about that; no matter how many improvements it has made, it is stuck with the foundational problems of the film. But the chance to see two theatrical masterminds go at it for a few hours is sufficient justification for the effort. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in its next incarnation, the Lunt-Fontanne Theater became the Hilty-Simard.

To delve into that sort of darkness more might be upsetting, and potentially less brand-friendly for Universal, but the surface level-focus of Death Becomes Her kept gnawing at me. It also stalls the show’s second act. Once you have Madeline and Helen taking swings at each other—and yes, shovel combat is never not funny—the production has little new territory to cover, thematically or emotionally. The plot barrels on as the enthusiasm wanes, from both the audience and the performances. Sieber’s character, the most obvious voice for a grounding rebuttal to Helen and Madeline’s obsession with eternal youth, has a solo that’s too silly by half, a duet with a talking paint can. Stuck in the mode of camp exuberance, Gattelli powers through the rest of the action by means of a chase sequence (echoes of Some Like It Hot, though not Nicholaw-level precise) toward an anticlimactic finale. As on film, Helen and Madeline end up as allies, each dependent on the other to patch up her body. They cruise, forever youthful, toward eternity, making fun of other people’s funeral services. They leave us with a wink and meta-joke, a song about how they’ll never have an ending, but if they did, it might go a little like this … The conceit’s cleverly nipped and tucked, the work of fine theatrical plastic surgery, hard to dislike and ultimately—as a medical examiner might say of these women—without a heartbeat.

But, after a buzzy initial run in Chicago, Death Becomes Her has been reborn on Broadway as a rousing, raucously entertaining hit, the kind of big, box-ticking blockbuster that one can see sticking around for a long time (pre-opening, ticket sales were such that it already received an extension to the end of next summer).

As the plot grows more ludicrous and convoluted, the fun peters out like a slowly deflating helium balloon sagging to earth. And if the show intended to make any pertinent commentary on the uselessness or dangerousness of chasing after one’s vanishing youth, it is swallowed up in the glossy production. Ms. Hilty and Ms. Simard are sufficiently seductive performers to hold our attention and affection through their witty work. Their final duet, an anthem of ax-burying solidarity, “Alive Forever,” brings the show to a musically satisfying climax. But while the heroines may achieve eternal life, the musical itself is much closer to forgettable than immortal.

The relentless, deliciously played, perfectly directed hilarity of Death Becomes Her (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, booking through August 31, 2025) distinguishes this skillfully executed riot of a Broadway musical. Based on the 1992 movie starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis, the musical sees life-long frenemies Madeline (Megan Hilty) and Helen (Jennifer Simard) fight to beyond-death in their body-punishing and mangling struggles to stay young and beautiful, and to one-up each other.

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.

A perfect rejoinder to the ubiquitous Broadway Sucks These Days gripe about the too-many movie-to-stage adaptations has arrived at long last, and it’s a simple three-word response: Death Becomes Her. A virtually perfect big-budget, broad-appeal musical comedy that improves in every way over the 1992 film, director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s wildly entertaining vehicle for two of our best singer-actor-comedians on any stage today renders the movie-as-source snipe worthless.

Everything in the musical is fantastically bigger and bolder, from Derek McLane’s goth-meets-Hollywood-excess design to Paul Tazewell’s fabulous costumes to Doug Besterman’s lush orchestrations. Charles LaPointe’s wigs are terrific, too. The tuneful score and witty lyrics are by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, making an impressive Broadway bow.

The momentum during the two-hour and 30-minute runtime also does stall somewhat in the second act — perhaps gently reminding audiences that indeed not everything should last, or take, forever — yet eventually recovers with a welcomely recrafted ending. The new finish may lack the side- (and arm- and leg- and head-) splitting gag of the film, but offers a touching and terrifically funny send-off to our tragic love triangle of doom. Madeline and Helen may have faked their deaths, but we’ll doubtlessly see them again. After all, the only thing more eternal than these brawling broads is the intellectual property that birthed them. Grade: B

Since Act 2 narratively does not have as much drive or emotion as the first, and the songs are still mush, Gattelli should have included even more body horror schtick. The Demi Moore film “The Substance” is a lesson in how upping the gore ante can rev up a story. But whenever the material sags, like aging skin, its sensational stars inject the show with new vibrancy. Even if the musical doesn’t have a discernible heartbeat, Hilty and Simard ensure “Death Becomes Her” stays fun and fabulous.

“Death Becomes Her” arrives on Broadway as a silly, campy, go-for-broke show that’s filled with hearty laughs (especially in the stronger Act 1) and a pair of gutsy, zesty and highly skilled lead performances from Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard that land right where a good chunk of the Broadway-going public believe divas like these two should be landing. While looking fabulous. The aim here appears to have been to create a kind of pseudo-feminist, gayer version of “The Producers,” and while those heights are not scaled, the Mel Brooksian template is enthusiastically employed, especially within Mattison and Carey’s patter-heavy ditties and droll lyrics.

The latest example is Death Becomes Her, which actually manages the neat trick of being superior to the 1992 fantasy film starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. The musical adaptation, newly arrived on Broadway after a Chicago tryout, is a laugh riot from start to finish, featuring superb comic performances from its two female leads, a lavish physical production that actually reflects the astronomical (reportedly $31.5 million) production cost, and a book featuring more zingy one-liners than a Friars Club Roast. The only thing missing are memorable songs, but fortunately the show is so entertaining you’ll find yourself not minding very much.

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.

Marco Pennette’s book gives Hilty all the grand-dame one-liners, but it’s Simard who gets the more unexpected laughs with delightful line readings that take a second or two to register. The sharp dialogue is in perfect tune with Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s lyrics, and that duo’s music, which is merely serviceable, manages not to get in the way of the characters and the story, which Pennette has made far less convoluted than its source material.

Death Becomes Her is a smart, brilliant adaptation that honors the original without fighting too hard at making sure it recreates every moment from the film. It’s clear the team has worked hard to put together one fun night of theatre, and boy do they deliver. I don’t think I stopped smiling from the first downbeat to the final curtain call. It’s high camp and Broadway heaven, need I say more?

It’s hard to follow the film's leading ladies Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, but if anyone is up for it, it’s Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard. Hilty bursts with star power as the glamorous and self-indulged actress Madeline Ashton, and Simard’s dry delivery is hilarious in author Helen Sharp’s meeker getup — and even better after she transforms into a femme fatale to show up Ashton. Christopher Sieber is the perfectly bumbling plastic surgeon Ernest Menville, who can’t get a song in edgewise when Madeline and Helen are at their finest - though he manages to sneak away for a ludicrously funny song of his own in one of the campiest scenes of the show. Michelle Williams, a Broadway veteran and former Destiny’s Child member, opens the show and is ever-present as the otherworldly Viola van Horn (based on Lisle von Rhuman from the film). Aloof in contrast to the hotheadedness of the main characters, with a voice to bring the house down, she is a fitting choice for a character offering eternal youth.

Naughty double entendres are sprinkled throughout, with mentions of cum guzzling, giving head, and fingering that aforementioned hole—you must believe me—and there’s also a fetching reference to Madeline having made it with her legs thrown wider than anyone, I mean higher than anyone. It’s perhaps inadvertently hilarious that after the serum, Hilty looks pretty much the same as before, but for the most part, this is a lavish diva fest that, while not a classic, feels like just the kind of feelgood exercise in bad behavior that we need right now.

This may be the one musical where you really might exit humming the set — but you’ll also remember the rapier-sharp repartee between Hilty and Simard, who lean into the material’s catty campiness with hilarious results. Simard’s Helen isn’t the only one who’s busting a gut at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. In addition, Hilty’s playfulness extends to her bio in the Playbill, where her credits are lifted directly from Streep’s résumé aside from a lone authentically Hilty TV credit, Smash, and the Streep-centric Instagram handle @ThisIsTotallyMegansRealBio. It’s a deft touch for a show that defies expectations in its all-out assault on the funny bone.

“Death Becomes Her,” a stylishly macabre Broadway musical comedy about a love/hate triangle, has much the same plot, catty repartee, and even some of the same comically gruesome special effects as the 1992 Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn/Bruce Willis movie on which it is based. Although not as starry a draw as their cinematic predecessors, Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard and Christopher Sieber — all Broadway favorites — do a fine job in the principal roles, and there are several memorable supporting players. But if I’m being honest, one theater artist stood out for me: Paul Tazewell, the costume designer.