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Addams Family musical: reviews

Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth came off best after unkind reviews for the Broadway production of a favourite TV family.

On Thursday, The Addams Family finally limped onto Broadway following a tryout run in Chicago that was plagued with rumors of cast misery, rewrites and other forms of backstage drama.

Despite good ticket sales, reviews have not been kind. Critics said an accomplished cast could not rescue generic, bland musical numbers and predictable jokes (and yes, it does include the TV theme- how could it not?).

Stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth (Frasier) managed to escape most of the criticism.

The TV version was of course based on the cartoons of Charles Addams published in The New Yorker magazine in 1938, and later spawned two movies.

ABC News said:
The score by Andrew Lippa, best known as the composer of the off-Broadway “Wild Party,” is eclectic, striving to giving each character his or her unique sound. Latin for Gomez, for example. A pop motif for Wednesday. And more traditional Broadway razzmatazz for an almost vaudevillian Uncle Fester. Lippa’s efforts make for a few jaunty tunes and a sizable collection of nimble lyrics — the rhythmic opening number that introduces the Addams clan is especially catchy. Unfortunately, they compete with more prosaic songs that fill time rather than advance the minimal story or flesh out the characters in any meaningful way. Which means a heavy burden is placed on the show’s stars to entertain. For the most part, they do, most emphatically Nathan Lane as Gomez, the patriarch of the household.

USA Today said:
Sadly, neither Lane nor his similarly dependable co-star, Bebe Neuwirth— a dry, stunning Morticia, in a low-cut gown and long black wig — is given much to work with here. The jokes, however artfully executed, are seldom surprising, and making cartoon characters who worked in the context of a half-hour sitcom compelling over 2½ hours proves a serious stretch. Zachary James’ croaking Lurch is funny for about two scenes; Jackie Hoffman’s hunched, screeching Grandma, who inexplicably walks around singing hippie anthems, is just irritating.

NY Times said:
Did I mention, by the way, that the Addams homestead in this version is in Central Park? In what appears to be a tourist-courting stratagem, the seeming strangeness of the Addamses is equated with the strangeness of New Yorkers as perceived by middle Americans. (Cue the old New York City jokes.) But it turns out that all of us are strange in our own ways (even Beinekes), that love conquers all, and that Morticia and Gomez are really just a pair of old softies, who worry about the same things that all moms and dads do, like getting older and seeing their children leave the nest.These worries have been set to blandly generic music by Mr. Lippa. (Sergio Trujillo did the perfunctory choreography, which includes a chorus line of ancestral ghosts.) And though the show makes fun of the greeting-card perkiness of Alice, who writes poems, listen to what Gomez sings to his daughter: “Life is full of contradictions/Every inch a mile./At the moment, we start weeping/That’s when we should smile.”

Chicago Tribune said:
Lane — funny, warm, delightful — now carries the show more than ever. And, perhaps due to the hostility of the outside gossips, the two stars of the night have drawn noticeably closer together and created a relationship that now carries most of the requisite warmth. The new number “Morticia,” an homage to the woman “with the dress cut down to Venezuela,” helps greatly, as does their lamentation of where they went wrong with their child rearing of Krysta Rodriguez’s ever-spunky Wednesday. “We took her to funerals in the morning mist,” they sing. “Slaughterhouses. Schindler’s List.”

2 Responses

  1. I was at the Letterman taping of that episode, and whilst the musical number was fun, it didn’t exactly make me want to see the rest of the show. There is a big buzz around it, they should have copied the hilarious big screen versions dry humour…

  2. I was wondering why you were doing a story on a Broadway musical David, slow news day? But I guess there are some TV links. LOL

    BTW I saw Nathan Lane on Letterman the other night and I didn’t even recognize Bebe.

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