Cabaret Scenes Theatre Review - The Addams Family

The family is unique, seeing the world in shades of gray, relishing the intoxicating spell of the graveyard. The music is often catchy and performances are energetic. Jersey Boys’s writers, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, provide a joke-filled but, unfortunately, pointless book. After that familiar snap-snap, there is little crackle and no pop in The Addams Family. But ka-ching! – the audience loves it.

Macabre yet affable, The Addams Family, living, dead and undecided, currently occupies the stage of Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. This musical is the latest version of Charles Addams’s iconic 1930s cartoons and the popular 1960s television series. It’s familiar fare and so are the stars: Tony winner Nathan Lane plays the father, Gomez Addams, with an offbeat mustache and quirky Spanish accent. His wife, Morticia, is portrayed by another Tony winner, Bebe Neuwirth, slinky in a black dress “cut down to Venezuela.”

Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez), the teenaged daughter with an affinity for shooting arrows, becomes engaged to Lucas Beineke (Wesley Taylor), a buttoned-down fellow from Ohio. When the Addamses host a dinner for Lucas’s straight-laced parents in their spooky Central Park mansion, it is a face-off of eccentric versus normal. Isn’t this reminiscent of another current musical, La Cage aux Folles? The Addams clan also inclues son Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Grandma and Lurch, the butler. Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello portray the Beinekes, Mal and Alice.

Nathan Lane envelops the show with energy. Bebe Neuwirth plays Morticia with deadpan static and an active vibrato. Adding spice are Grandma (Jackie Hoffman), a wild-haired dynamo of undetermined age and unchecked libido, Adam Reigler as naughty Pugsley, and Zachary James’s Lurch, the cadaverous butler, is a trenchant presence.

Since almost everyone gets a big number, Sergio Trujillo choreographed “(Death Is) Just Around the Corner” as a spot for Neuwirth, although her trademark limberness and high kicks are hampered by the skin-tight Morticia dress. At one point Alice, enamored of Hallmark rhymes, frantically expresses her yearning to break free with “Waiting.” Yet there is an ephemeral pop-in quality to Andrew Lippa’s traditional songs. The Addams’s eccentricities evaporate into a feel-good squishiness. Kevin Chamberlin as Uncle Fester shines in his sweet “The Moon and Me,” with an effective ET moment, flying toward the moon. Gomez’s bittersweet “Happy/Sad,” sentimentally reflecting on life with Wednesday, is offset by his advising her that “Love still conquers all.” It feels out of character.

The unevenness of this production and its prosaic songs is largely due to directorial problems. The sets and costumes are imaginative, but Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch directed this show without a strong viewpoint. Further creative consultation was added by Jerry Zaks. Lighting design by Natasha Katz is shadowed with gloom and Angelina Avallone gives Neuwirth an appropriate deathly glow and Lurch looks suitably fresh from the crypt. Basil Twist’s creative puppetry includes a giant squid living in the basement sewer.

While The Addams Family lacks the snappiness of Vic Mizzy’s TV theme, it does embrace the cartoons’s laugh in the face of fear — “Let’s not talk about anything weird...let’s not talk about anything else but love.” It is a family-friendly show, offering little risk and no offensiveness.

To its credit, it is one of the two Broadway openings this season with original songs.

(Pictured: Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane. Photo by Joan Marcus)

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
April 15, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org



	The Addams Family Lunt-Fontanne Theatre New York, NY
The family is unique, seeing the world in shades of gray, relishing the intoxicating spell of the graveyard. The music is often catchy and performances are energetic. Jersey Boys’s writers, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, provide a joke-filled but, unfortunately, pointless book. After that familiar snap-snap, there is little crackle and no pop in The Addams Family. But ka-ching! – the audience loves it. Macabre yet affable, The Addams Family, living, dead and undecided, currently occupies the stage of Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. This musical is the latest version of Charles Addams’s iconic 1930s cartoons and the popular 1960s television series. It’s familiar fare and so are the stars: Tony winner Nathan Lane plays the father, Gomez Addams, with an offbeat mustache and quirky Spanish accent. His wife, Morticia, is portrayed by another Tony winner, Bebe Neuwirth, slinky in a black dress “cut down to Venezuela.” Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez), the teenaged daughter with an affinity for shooting arrows, becomes engaged to Lucas Beineke (Wesley Taylor), a buttoned-down fellow from Ohio. When the Addamses host a dinner for Lucas’s straight-laced parents in their spooky Central Park mansion, it is a face-off of eccentric versus normal. Isn’t this reminiscent of another current musical, La Cage aux Folles? The Addams clan also inclues son Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Grandma and Lurch, the butler. Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello portray the Beinekes, Mal and Alice. Nathan Lane envelops the show with energy. Bebe Neuwirth plays Morticia with deadpan static and an active vibrato. Adding spice are Grandma (Jackie Hoffman), a wild-haired dynamo of undetermined age and unchecked libido, Adam Reigler as naughty Pugsley, and Zachary James’s Lurch, the cadaverous butler, is a trenchant presence. Since almost everyone gets a big number, Sergio Trujillo choreographed “(Death Is) Just Around the Corner” as a spot for Neuwirth, although her trademark limberness and high kicks are hampered by the skin-tight Morticia dress. At one point Alice, enamored of Hallmark rhymes, frantically expresses her yearning to break free with “Waiting.” Yet there is an ephemeral pop-in quality to Andrew Lippa’s traditional songs. The Addams’s eccentricities evaporate into a feel-good squishiness. Kevin Chamberlin as Uncle Fester shines in his sweet “The Moon and Me,” with an effective ET moment, flying toward the moon. Gomez’s bittersweet “Happy/Sad,” sentimentally reflecting on life with Wednesday, is offset by his advising her that “Love still conquers all.” It feels out of character. The unevenness of this production and its prosaic songs is largely due to directorial problems. The sets and costumes are imaginative, but Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch directed this show without a strong viewpoint. Further creative consultation was added by Jerry Zaks. Lighting design by Natasha Katz is shadowed with gloom and Angelina Avallone gives Neuwirth an appropriate deathly glow and Lurch looks suitably fresh from the crypt. Basil Twist’s creative puppetry includes a giant squid living in the basement sewer. While The Addams Family lacks the snappiness of Vic Mizzy’s TV theme, it does embrace the cartoons’s laugh in the face of fear — “Let’s not talk about anything weird...let’s not talk about anything else but love.” It is a family-friendly show, offering little risk and no offensiveness. To its credit, it is one of the two Broadway openings this season with original songs. (Pictured: Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane. Photo by Joan Marcus) Elizabeth Ahlfors Cabaret Scenes April 15, 2010 www.cabaretscenes.org

The Addams Family

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre New York, NY

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
New York, NY