Fans of the Netherworld showed up for the “BeetlejuiceBlack & White Ball” on Monday night in New York City to see actress Sophia Anne Caruso, composer Eddie Perfect, and more of the cast of the Broadway musical Beetlejuice. The unusual celebration featured performances of songs that didn’t make it to Broadway from the Washington, D.C. run — including “Mama Would” and “Everything Is Kinda Meh” — as well as several debuts of Eddie Perfect’s compositions that have never been heard or performed before by a living soul.
Broadway’s Lydia trio — Sophia Anne Caruso, Dana Steingold, and Presley Ryan — surprised the audience with a sing-a-long to breakout hit “Dead Mom.” To round out the weird and spooky evening, Shrunken Head Guy, a fan favorite of both the film and musical, made his DJ debut to keep the party going after the performances ended. We have an exclusive video of Caruso belting out “Mama Would,” the song that was originally performed by Lydia early in act one during the scene where she first discovers she’s sharing her new house with ghosts, and the Maitlands had just performed the ‘Ready Set Reprise’ and, with sheets on, had attempted to scare Lydia.
“There were too many songs in act one,” Perfect tells Rolling Stone about why it was cut. “Plus, the song and the scene were trying to communicate two different things: The song focused on the fact that Lydia had had a strange and unusual connection to her mother that was severed after her death, but the scene was about the potential for a friend an ally in the Maitlands. It was difficult to get that balance right.”
As Perfect explains, “Anthony King and Scott Brown [book] wrote a beautiful scene — which is still in the Broadway show — that neatly explains Lydia’s mother’s kookiness as well as exploring the potential for Lydia and the Maitlands to find a common bond. They’re all lonely and lost. What if they helped each other? As soon as we cut the song, despite liking it a great deal, it was obvious that we could now relay those feelings and that information in a more economical way. It also gave the audience’s ears a break from sung material and allowed us to lay some necessary character and story pipe for our show.”