56 | JANUARY 26 • 2023
ARTS&LIFE
THEATER
B
eetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice.
Say his name three times and
he’ll appear at the Detroit Opera
House Jan. 31-Feb. 12.
It’s showtime, folks.
After a wildly successful run on
Broadway, Beetlejuice the musical closed
at the Winter Garden
Theatre in New York
City on Jan. 8. The first
national tour kicked off in
San Francisco just a few
weeks before.
Like the title character
that he understudies
— a ghost from the
netherworld who is summoned back to
the land of the living to wreak havoc —
getting cast in Beetlejuice has been an
out-of-body experience for Lee N Price.
“My agent emailed me on the night
of my birthday, April 25, asking if I
wanted to send in a video audition for
the national tour of Beetlejuice,” said
Price, who turned 22 and graduated
a week later from Baldwin Wallace
University’s Music Theatre program in
Ohio. “The night before graduation, my
agent emailed me back that I had an
in-person callback on May 9. I literally
graduated from college at 2 p.m. on
May 7, packed up my things and sent
them home with my parents and got on
a plane to New York the next day.”
Eight callbacks later, Price got the
call on July 26 that he was cast as
understudy of Beetlejuice and Otho, a
spiritual, crystal-loving guru, as well as
a member of the ensemble.
“It was a crazy three-month post-
graduation journey,” said Price, who
also minored in arts management.
Rehearsals started in New York
in October, followed by previews in
Paducah, Kentucky, and San Francisco
with the national tour officially opening
on Dec. 14 in the city by the bay.
“Performing the show for the first
time in front of a fully packed audience,
many in cosplay, was like playing a rock
concert. It was insane,” Price said.
The cast and crew finished the first
leg of the tour in San Francisco on Dec.
31 and then had the next 10 days off for
vacation.
FROM ISRAEL AND BACK
On Jan. 1, Price took a 15-hour flight
to Israel to visit his Israeli friends and
family, including grandparents, cousins,
aunts and uncles, and also meet up with
his parents and twin siblings who were
already in Israel from New York. One
week later, Price was back performing
in Cleveland, the next Beetlejuice tour
stop, right before the Detroit run
starting Jan. 31.
“It was super fun,” says Price, who
was born in Israel and moved to New
York with his family when he was 3.
“We try to go back to Israel and visit
twice a year. I had my bar mitzvah
The Price of Beetlejuice
Julie Smith
Yolles
On tour with Lee N Price.
Justin Collette
(Beetlejuice) and Tour
Company of Beetlejuice
will perform at the
Detroit Opera House
Jan. 31-Feb. 12.