INTERVIEW: David Josefsberg finds the heart in ‘Beetlejuice’ on Broadway
Photo: Beetlejuice stars, from left, Elizabeth Teeter, David Josefsberg and Kerry Butler. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy / Provided by Polk & Co. with permission.
To be expected, there are laughs every few seconds in Beetlejuice, the new musical playing the Marquis Theatre on Broadway. What audience members might find surprising is how much the hard-working cast is able to tap into the heart of this no-pulse, undead story. There’s Elizabeth Teeter as Lydia, the teenager mourning the death of her mother and trying to find her place in the world. There’s Adam Dannheisser as Charles, Lydia’s father who is trying to start a new life with Delia (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer). And then, of course, there’s the married couple who die within the first few minutes of the show: Kerry Butler’s Barbara and David Josefsberg’s Adam. They become stand-in parents to Lydia and strive to keep hold of their earthly house, even though they’re deader than dead, and Beetlejuice (Alex Brightman) is knocking on the door.
Josefsberg is a veteran of Broadway. He has appeared in The Prom, Waitress, Hand of God, Honeymoon in Vegas, Motown, The Wedding Singer, Les Misérables and Grease, and now he’s portraying the dimple-in-cheek Adam, a well-meaning, cheesy husband who can’t understand how death got in the way of his life’s plans.
The actor has been on quite the roller-coaster ride with the show. He took over the role of Adam from Rob McClure before the pandemic, and then the show shut down to make room for The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster at the Winter Garden Theatre. Then, everything shut down for a year and a half, and the pending transfer of Beetlejuice to the Marquis Theatre was delayed. But Josefsberg remembers the first performance back, after being away from live theater for so long, and that performance is one of his fondest professional memories of all time.
“We all knew it was a going to be an insane, high-energy, amazing performance,” Josefsberg said in a recent phone interview. “It probably was one of my top three most amazing stage experiences in my life. From just when I opened the door, I have an opening moment where it’s like a TV show. ‘Barbara, I’m home,’ and I think there was a minute applause. When [Beetlejuice] came out, there was a huge hold. When everyone came out, each person got their own applause. We had been waiting for so long for this. … It was incredible.”
Josefsberg said he loves the character of Adam, and the role fits nicely into his wheelhouse. He likes playing characters who exhibit many different emotions over the course of the show. “It doesn’t seem like Adam does, but he really does,” the actor said of the character’s arc. “He’s fun. He’s kind, and he gets to become superman at the end. There’s that moment where he rips off his glasses, and he’s like, ‘We’re going to do this.’ … So he gets to build from sort of a namby-pamby-ish, wishy-washy kind of guy who can’t make decisions to, in my opinion, one of the heroes of the show.”
Although performing Beetlejuice eight times a week can be draining, the cast receives a lot of energy from the enthusiastic audience. For Josefsberg, the children in the crowd are a wonderful addition because many of them are being introduced to Broadway for the first time. Also, some fans of the original Tim Burton movie come in full-on black-and-white costume.
“It’s absolutely thrilling to be able to see,” Josefsberg said about the audience. “They are on the edge of their seats, too. This is not a little, low-energy show. They’re getting lights and sandworms and noises and crazy, so it’s really thrilling for them. It’s great to see their smiles, or I can see them smiling with their eyes.”
That validation has been worth the wait. The pandemic upturned the Broadway industry, and some of the reverberations of the shutdown and the slow return of audience members continue to be felt. This past week The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running show in Broadway history, decided to post a closing notice. Beetlejuice has strong sales, but when the shutdown was stretching on for months, Josefsberg had his doubts that a return would happen.
“We had already known that we were going to have to leave our theater because Wolverine was taking over our spot, but there were little rumors about that we were going to continue going,” he said. “And the producers were already steadfast in saying how much they loved this … giant show and how they wanted to move it. I had the utmost confidence in them, but when one day turns into a weekend, turns into weeks, turns into months, turns into years, I absolutely thought, well, I don’t see how this is going to get back. Although, even this 50-something-year-old man has a TikTok, and during the pandemic I would sing songs with my son as my Barbara. And they were so engaged, and I thought there’s definitely a place for it. And I knew the producers were willing, and I’m just so grateful that it did end up happening.”
Beetlejuice works so well on stage, in Josefsberg’s estimation, because the writers brought the best elements from the movie to the theater. There is a ton of humor, but there’s also a ton of heart, which may be surprising to some audience members.
“Before I got this show, I was in The Prom, and I remember Beetlejuice [playing nearby],” he said. “I was like, what? Why is everyone going to see Beetlejuice? Why are we closing? What’s so special? And then when I got Beetlejuice, I went to see it, and I was laughing and crying. I was like, OK, I see. It’s not humor for humor’s sake. … The people who are in the show are old pros — Alex and Leslie and Adam, Kerry Butler, Rob McClure I’ll give a shoutout, and then me taking over Rob McClure — all of us had been around. We know how to bring the story to the stage, but also our joy of performing with each other and being able to do this thing that we get to do, it’s all of it together. A comedy is great, but you need to have heart with it as well. This does that, and we have this girl, Elizabeth Teeter, who is outrageously, phenomenally talented. These kids see themselves as her, right. It’s difficult for her, and she is stepping out and becoming this person. We have this angsty teen who is learning, and I think that’s what brings in these kids.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Beetlejuice, featuring David Josefsberg, is now playing the Marquis Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
