Karis Oka as Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice the Musical. Photo: Benny Capp.
There’s nothing strange and usual about the success that Karis Oka is now enjoying in one of the most coveted roles in musical theatre. Starring in the Australian production of stage hit Beetlejuice the Musical, she isn’t the first actor to step into Lydia Deetz’s combat boots in the eight-time Tony Award-nominated show.
But after roles in SIX the Musical, Fangirls and Ride the Cyclone, plus on-screen Erotic Stories, Population 11, Strife and The Deb, playing a goth teen who moves into a newly haunted house feels like a part that Oka was born for.
Sarah Ward is a film and television critic; arts, entertainment and culture editor and journalist; and film festival organiser. She is the film and TV critic for ABC radio Gold Coast, the Australia-based film critic for Screen International, and a critic and member at the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Sarah’s background also spans stints as film and television editor at both Concrete Playground and Variety Australia, and as Goethe-Institut Australien’s Kino in Oz critic and writer. Her work has been published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Birth.Movies.Death, SBS, SBS Movies, Flicks, Lumina, Senses of Cinema, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, Junkee, FilmInk, Broadsheet, Televised Revolution, Metro Magazine and Screen Education, the City of Gold Coast, the World Film Locations book series and more.
