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Charles Addams without teeth
"The Addams Family' in New York
Toby Zinman
A perfect Charles Addams cartoon is reproduced in the program for The Addams Family: Slinky Morticia leans against Gomez on a love seat. The caption reads, "Are you unhappy, darling?" "Oh yes, yes! Completely."
And that sums up the genius and the enduring appeal of the Addams family— that reversal of expectation, provoking a tiny gasp, a hilarious little shock.
Unfortunately, no expectations are reversed in this big musical, which translates into human the cartoon characters we came to know and love during Addams's 60 years as a contributor to The New Yorker. The show, long-aborning in its journey to Broadway, is a middle-of-the-road, feel-good musical that merely tips its hat to weirdness.
The most fun occurs in the very first minutes: With the old-fashioned red-velvet curtain still closed, the orchestra begins the overture with the familiar theme song from the "Addams Family" TV show, and the entire audience instantly snaps its fingers in unison at the right moments, as if rehearsed. This was a collective decision to have a good time.
Hobbled by a dress
And we did have a good time— through Act I, where the fun really comes from meeting, one after another, the household characters: Hand appears to part the curtains, and then the fam arrives, headed by Gomez (Nathan Lane, a rare genius of comic timing) and Morticia (Bebe Neuwirth, whose hobbling dress seems to have hobbled her singing and her dancing and her acting— where is Lilith from "Cheers," with her deadpan face and flat delivery? Where is Chicago's Velma, with her mean and sexy Fosse moves?).
Uncle Fester (Kevin Chamberlin) is jolly but not sufficiently repulsive, and Lurch (Zachary James) is really only very tall. "It" the living mop, makes a brief but amusing appearance.
The two characters who approach the bizarre tone of the cartoons are Pugsley (Adam Riegler), the vicious kid, and his potion-making Grandma (a hoot as played by the astonishing two-voiced Jackie Hoffman).
Pedestrian baggage
The plot revolves around Love: Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez), the Addams family's teenage daughter— she of the pigeon-killing crossbow— has fallen in love with a normal boy, Lucas (Wesley Taylor). She invites him to dinner with and his Ohio parents (Terrence Mann—now there is a singing voice! And Carolee Carmello—ditto!). Morticia and Gomez reminisce about their first date, when they went to see Death of a Salesman— "How we laughed!"
But once they turn parental— our little girl is getting married, etc, etc.— Morticia and Gomez turn normal. Suddenly their marriage is threatened by all the pedestrian baggage that threatens every marriage: aging, fear of dying, loss of sex appeal, crabby tiffs. Each character gets to sing a song— most of them musically conventional love songs, despite their silly lyrics.
The laughs derive largely from props: Grandma munches on a jar of eyeballs; a love-starved giant squid grasps a rose in its tentacle. The family game, Full Disclosure— "based loosely on the Inquisition"— creates predictable misunderstandings and self-discoveries, as the Ohio family throws off its suffocating blandness and the Addamses embrace something close to bourgeois family values.
Act II is mainly a sentimental business, with few laughs and plenty of cheesy stage effects involving flying. It's as though they said, "Well, it worked for Peter Pan and Mary Poppins, it'll work for us."
Creative cave-in
The people who wrote the book— Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice— boast all sorts of credentials, but their big joint success is big Broadway: Jersey Boys. The music and lyrics are by Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party). The directors/designers are Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, both of whom have done all kinds of avant-garde work, including Shockheaded Peter and Philip Glass's Satyagraha. But cave they all did in this case. The result is a hodgepodge of big stars, silly stage effects, formulaic music and cliché choreography by Sergio Trujillo (another veteran of Jersey Boys).
Remember that Charles Addams cartoon with the skier zooming down a mountain, his ski tracks having parted to go around a tree? Or the banana peel on the sidewalk, cordoned off with caution signs? Remember that witty weirdness? That's what's missing from The Addams Family.
And that sums up the genius and the enduring appeal of the Addams family— that reversal of expectation, provoking a tiny gasp, a hilarious little shock.
Unfortunately, no expectations are reversed in this big musical, which translates into human the cartoon characters we came to know and love during Addams's 60 years as a contributor to The New Yorker. The show, long-aborning in its journey to Broadway, is a middle-of-the-road, feel-good musical that merely tips its hat to weirdness.
The most fun occurs in the very first minutes: With the old-fashioned red-velvet curtain still closed, the orchestra begins the overture with the familiar theme song from the "Addams Family" TV show, and the entire audience instantly snaps its fingers in unison at the right moments, as if rehearsed. This was a collective decision to have a good time.
Hobbled by a dress
And we did have a good time— through Act I, where the fun really comes from meeting, one after another, the household characters: Hand appears to part the curtains, and then the fam arrives, headed by Gomez (Nathan Lane, a rare genius of comic timing) and Morticia (Bebe Neuwirth, whose hobbling dress seems to have hobbled her singing and her dancing and her acting— where is Lilith from "Cheers," with her deadpan face and flat delivery? Where is Chicago's Velma, with her mean and sexy Fosse moves?).
Uncle Fester (Kevin Chamberlin) is jolly but not sufficiently repulsive, and Lurch (Zachary James) is really only very tall. "It" the living mop, makes a brief but amusing appearance.
The two characters who approach the bizarre tone of the cartoons are Pugsley (Adam Riegler), the vicious kid, and his potion-making Grandma (a hoot as played by the astonishing two-voiced Jackie Hoffman).
Pedestrian baggage
The plot revolves around Love: Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez), the Addams family's teenage daughter— she of the pigeon-killing crossbow— has fallen in love with a normal boy, Lucas (Wesley Taylor). She invites him to dinner with and his Ohio parents (Terrence Mann—now there is a singing voice! And Carolee Carmello—ditto!). Morticia and Gomez reminisce about their first date, when they went to see Death of a Salesman— "How we laughed!"
But once they turn parental— our little girl is getting married, etc, etc.— Morticia and Gomez turn normal. Suddenly their marriage is threatened by all the pedestrian baggage that threatens every marriage: aging, fear of dying, loss of sex appeal, crabby tiffs. Each character gets to sing a song— most of them musically conventional love songs, despite their silly lyrics.
The laughs derive largely from props: Grandma munches on a jar of eyeballs; a love-starved giant squid grasps a rose in its tentacle. The family game, Full Disclosure— "based loosely on the Inquisition"— creates predictable misunderstandings and self-discoveries, as the Ohio family throws off its suffocating blandness and the Addamses embrace something close to bourgeois family values.
Act II is mainly a sentimental business, with few laughs and plenty of cheesy stage effects involving flying. It's as though they said, "Well, it worked for Peter Pan and Mary Poppins, it'll work for us."
Creative cave-in
The people who wrote the book— Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice— boast all sorts of credentials, but their big joint success is big Broadway: Jersey Boys. The music and lyrics are by Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party). The directors/designers are Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, both of whom have done all kinds of avant-garde work, including Shockheaded Peter and Philip Glass's Satyagraha. But cave they all did in this case. The result is a hodgepodge of big stars, silly stage effects, formulaic music and cliché choreography by Sergio Trujillo (another veteran of Jersey Boys).
Remember that Charles Addams cartoon with the skier zooming down a mountain, his ski tracks having parted to go around a tree? Or the banana peel on the sidewalk, cordoned off with caution signs? Remember that witty weirdness? That's what's missing from The Addams Family.
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