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.

