Riverhead’s production of Beetlejuice Jr a hit for middle school drama club
The Riverhead Middle School Middle Masques drama club summoned both laughter and applause for its production of Beetlejuice Jr. this past weekend. It was the first time Beetlejuice Jr. has been performed on Long Island.
The musical adaptation of the original 1988 film opened on Broadway in 2019. The show follows Lydia Deetz as she and her neglectful father move into a home haunted by the Maitlands, a recently deceased couple. The play also features Beetlejuice, a devious spirit with the goal of being summoned back to life by getting someone to say his name three times.
Laura Nitti, director of both the middle school and high school drama clubs, has been running the program since 2017, with a brief hiatus for COVID. “It was a great show. It’s a well-done junior version of a tough musical, and the regular musical is not available, so it’s only the junior versions available. It’s a special kind of show,” said Ms. Nitti.
The middle school performs one musical each year and the high school stages two productions, one in the winter and one in the spring. Many kids join the program in seventh grade and stay involved straight through high school. “I definitely get a lot of kids that are scared. They don’t know what it’s about. They never had an experience with it,” said Ms. Nitti, “And then once they’re in, they’re in, from seventh grade till they graduate, most people don’t drop. They stay with me the whole time.”
One of Ms. Nitti’s goals is to bring on interested high schoolers to serve as mentors for the younger thespians and help foster a greater sense of community. “Some of my high school kids who are interested in going to school to teach or perform technical theater, I have them mentoring the kids in the middle school,” Ms. Nitti said. “It kind of bridges the gap, so they feel more comfortable when they come to the high school. So there’s a lot of crossover work between the two schools to make it like one big community.”
Next up is the high school’s spring production of “Something Rotten,” running April 3 to April 6.
