Authors: Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice (book), Andrew Lippa (music/lyrics). At: Ford Center/Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph. Tickets: 800-775-2000;BroadwayInChicago.com; $28-$105. Runs through: Jan. 10
With a fabulous cast and topnotch creative team, The Addams Family is all but sold out on its march to Broadway where everyone smells a hit. Even if Big Apple reviewers selectively find details to disapprove, audiences won’t care about their critical nits.
This isn’t the Addams Family of TV-sitcom fame, although the character names and the louvered mansion setting are about the same. But the authors revisited the 150 or so original Charles Addams cartoons—not the TV show or its movie spinoffs—in order to create more fully fleshed-out characters who embrace darkness and sex in both words and music. They espouse a philosophy which is familiar and simple but nonetheless profound: the cup is half-full and half-empty; one can love and hate a person; happiness and sadness co-exist; the yin and yang.
To unveil its philosophy, The Addams Family turns daughter Wednesday into a hormonal goth princess of 18. When she falls in love with Lucas, a “normal” boy, her parents—Gomez and Morticia—are horrified. In the tradition of You Can’t Take It With You, Lucas and his uptight, sex-starved parents come for dinner and stay for a transforming night helped by a potion, a tango and a giant squid. Meanwhile, Uncle Fester serves as narrator, then falls in love with the moon and dances with her in one of the show’s most visually appealing scenes. This very traditional book-and-number show boasts a score and libretto of equal weight and strength. The book is fairly complex and more about wit than punchlines, but nonetheless it provides some big laughs and a few probably-unnecessary slightly raunchy gags. Adolescents will love it.
Composer Andrew Lippa has inched towards Broadway success for 15 years; now he’ll finally have it. His tuneful pastiche of tangos, ballads, anthems and songs-and-dances even includes homage to the Addams TV theme song, to the audience’s delight. There’s a dash of John Williams action music here, a touch of John Kander strut there and some soft rock in between. Nathan Lane (Gomez) gets a ballad that will have legs, “Happy/Sad,” but every principal has a big number, with certifiable show-stoppers in “Waiting,” “The Moon and Me” and “The Swordfight/Tango.”
Co-directors/designers Pheline McDermott and Julian Crouch are famous visualists who’ve made drafty Chez Addams into a dark but oddly beautiful dreamscape, especially as bathed in moonlight or outlined against New York’s Central Park West skyline by lighting designer Natasha Katz. The mansion is filled with unexpected creatures supplied by Basil Twist’s wonderful puppets.
Stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia are generous talents and pitch-perfect casting who could carry the show themselves. Fortunately, the entire ensemble is rock-solid. Krysta Rodriquez (Wednesday) and Carolee Carmello (Lucas’s mom) have astonishing pipes, while Kevin Chamberlain (Uncle Fester) ranges from patter song to operatic flourish with ease.
The Addams Family needs very little pre-Broadway tweaking: a bit more substance for Morticia, a minute or two less of the “Swordfight/Tango,” a couple more big laughs and this one’s good to go.