#haaaaah

disclaimer again that i am no beetlejuice expert, i'm not up to date on any script changes or bits that have popped up in the various productions, i was shocked (lol) seeing the maitlands die via electrocution instead of falling through the floor in the tour. i am cross-referencing w a bootleg though. speaking of which i had to type in "slime tutorial" to find a bootleg. very nostalgic

probably the most important distinction is that the japanese production was SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER than the original!! the first act is about 20 minutes longer and it's entirely because they added more jokes and bits. the show in any format is quite carried by BJ as a narrator and comedic presence but japan loves a comedian and really took any chance to let an actor play a character for the audience. for example, when miss argentina comes on stage, she gives a full (at least 2 minute) monologue about her backstory, recounting how she slit her wrists on stage, with a very over-the-top cartoony performance before she gets into What I Know Now

this carries over to the main cast as well, the stretch of the show featuring just bj and the maitlands before lydia comes into the pitcutre is wayyyy longer with way more bits, some of which felt like improv. bj's opening monologue as he throws away the handbook is definitely longer as he plays the crowd. the night i saw it, after Fright of Their Lives when he addresses the audience like "sorry, it's my name on the marquis but now you're gonna have to watch a different show...", instead of saying "the maitlands" and calling them boring, he said "a vlog of mickey and minnie mouse going shopping for watches", thus forcing adam's actor to do a mickey mouse impression for a bit til he laughed and they moved on. idk if he just pulled that out on him for that night or if every show he pitches a different scene to improv or what

some of these added bits were references to japanese pop culture such as the lights coming up on BJ trying to teach adam and barbara girigiri dance, etc etc. which brings us to arguably the biggest added bit: at the dinner party, maxie dean explains how his wife recently visited japan and got obsessed, so she walks around everywhere dressed like a kabuki actor with a full entourage behind her to create sound effects and toss flower petals and fan her w a flag-of-japan fan. when she says "he's so mean to me, i'm his 5th wife!" she speaks with the trademark high-pitched slow style of a female kabuki character, and when she finishes speaking, her entourage tosses cherry blossom petals and bangs the hyoshigi on the ground. HUGE commitment to make the bit happen and the audience was eating it up, it went on a while. and honestly for a second i was like "idk maybe this IS how they did it on broadway" and clearly it isn't, that would never land on american audiences, but i think it's sooooo interesting that they would change and add so much to appeal to their crowd!!

speaking of appeal to the crowd, more bits does mean more raunchy bits. some important context here is that a lot of musical theater productions in japan revolve around a famous idol playing the lead. when i saw be more chill in japan a member of the group Hey Say Jump played jeremy and in beetlejuice, the lead was jesse from the group SixTONES. this impacts the vibe a bit because a large chunk of the audience is there to see and support their favorite idol (i don't remember when in the show this was but at one point jesse started breakdancing and the crowd applauded in awe and amazement), so a lot of the crowd will be very nicely-dressed girlies who might not know much about musicals or the show they're seeing. i say this with zero judgment! we love to see it! but honestly i had not expected that so many of the raunchy bits had also been written into the japanese version. for example when lydia stabs bj with the statue and he keels over, the actor sat back up to reveal the end of the stick poking not out of his chest but out of his crotch, then going "oh that's not right is it". there was also a kinda long bit in the first bj + maitlands scene (i think where in the broadway ver bj tells barbara "well, you give me a boner") where adam yells "who do you think you are, getting a boner over someone else's wife!" and they stop talking til it goes away. after a second bj glances down and says "sorry 🥺", they wait a few more seconds, adam asks, "still??" and bj goes "SOWWYYY 🥺🥺" again. everyone also kisses everyone else way more - to show how cheesy adam & barbara are in their opening scene, when adam gets home, he kisses barbara like 5 times in a row as she's trying to explain something about her day like "i saw- (kiss) i saw- (kiss) i saw- (kiss)", and this bit is repeated by diff characters (including charles and delia iirc) a bunch of times.

some other details:

-japan has a weird idea of rap and "gangsta" culture so instead of bj dressing as a tacky cable tv gameshow host for the gameshow segment, he was wearing like, a backwards hat and baggy tracksuit and a giant gold chain w a dollar sign on it and ending every sentence with "YO"

-i found it interesting how the translyricization featured a lot of the original english lyrics! every "a show about death" was sung in english, along with many uses of "dead mom" and "i'm going home"