All Entries Tagged With: "Charles Addams"
“The Addams Family” Visits Borders at Columbus Circle
On Friday, May 14th, Borders Columbus Circle will present “The Addams Family: From Page to Stage”. At the event, Sarah Henry, curator of the Charles Addams Exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, will lead a discussion with The Addams Family creative team members Andrew Lippa (Composery/Lyricist), Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman (Book Writers). Joining them will be Kevin Miserochhi, author of the new collection of Charles Addams drawings entitled “An Evilution”.
The event will begin at 5pm with a discussion of the show’s development, as well as a performance by Tony nominee Kevin Chamberlin, and members of The Addams Family cast.
“The Addams Family” A Critic-Proof Smash
This is a pretty long article, but it’s so good that I have to post it in it’s entirety. I found these excerpts to be of particular interest to fans of the show:
“…the musical has grossed $6.5 million in five weeks… and the producers are already planning a multicity national tour.”
“…(the) President of Group Sales Box Office, a major Broadway ticket seller, said …that “The Addams Family” remained the biggest ticket advance of any Broadway show that his company has sold this year.”
A scene from “The Addams Family,” featuring Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane, which opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater.
Critics May Rant, but ‘Addams Family’ Rakes It In
By PATRICK HEALY, NY Times
Published: April 13, 2010
The new Broadway musical “The Addams Family” opened Thursday to the sort of scathing reviews that would bury most shows in the graveyard next to the Addamses’ forbidding mansion.
The result: The show sold $851,000 in tickets last weekend on top of a $15 million sales advance, huge figures for a new Broadway run, and all but guaranteeing that it will be hard to snag a pair of good orchestra seats until fall. After five months of well-publicized creative difficulties for the show, this seeming paradox amounts to a theater world version of the golden fleece: the critic-proof smash.
Hollywood, pop music studios and book publishers long ago mastered the art of assembling commercially successful products that critics hate. Theater is different: Only a fraction of shows turn a profit to begin with (about 30 percent on Broadway each year), and expensive tickets, fixed performance schedules and a finite potential audience for most live theater increase the importance of reviews.
Yet “The Addams Family” seems to have cracked a formula that to various degrees made long-running hits of “Jekyll & Hyde,” “Beauty and the Beast,” ”Mamma Mia!” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” after being dismissed by many critics. Such shows have tended to attract audiences already fond of their songs or characters.
That formula for “The Addams Family” includes a beloved brand-name title, a famous star, an inoffensive script, echoes of nostalgia and some savvy commercial judgments. The producers chose a theater with an unusually large number of orchestra seats, many of which they can sell at premium prices that top out at $300 apiece. And, in an unusual move for Broadway, they recruited five regional theaters as producing partners, spreading the financial risk while also having access to their subscribers and to those theaters for a national tour.
Kevin Chamberlin as Uncle Fester and Jackie Hoffman as Grandma performing onstage in “The Addams Family.”
While the creators promised to base the musical on Charles Addams’s mordantly sophisticated cartoons in The New Yorker, they ended up adding the theme song of the “Addams Family” television show for the audience to snap-snap along with before the curtain even goes up. In hopes of improving the show between a Chicago tryout and its Broadway run, they also added broad, sometimes goofy touches like a toupee-wearing Uncle Fester and a Grandma dressed like a Red Cross nurse — images that make some people laugh, but belie the darker spirit of the Addams cartoons for others.
The producers also built a marketing campaign that would cover all the bases, using images that would remind people of the cartoons, the television show, and the “Addams Family” movies. And the casting of Nathan Lane to play the paterfamilias Gomez, through at least next March, has been especially important to the musical’s fortunes, according to several theater producers not affiliated with the show, given that he is a popular actor with both theater- and film-goers.
“If Nathan Lane is in anything you already have my money in the till, and I imagine that there are thousands of others who feel the same,” said Michael Ritchie, artistic director of the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, which is not associated with “The Addams Family.”
Whether the musical — which cost $16.5 million to mount on Broadway — can flourish without a well-known star like Mr. Lane is among the factors that will determine whether the show endures as critic-proof. Based on 26 major reviews for “The Addams Family,” including one in The New York Times, the theater Web site Stagegrade.com gave the show a median grade of D+. For now, however, the musical has grossed $6.5 million in five weeks — more than current hit musicals like “A Little Night Music,” “Billy Elliot,” “West Side Story” and “Wicked” did in their early weeks — and the producers are already planning a multicity national tour.
“We sought to create a musical that was not only very funny, but also surprised the audience by proving to be touching as well,” Roy Furman, one of the lead producers of the show, said in an interview by e-mail. “We are delighted that audiences have responded so strongly, as evidenced by nightly ovations, and word of mouth, which has sparked advance sales.”
Four years in the making, “The Addams Family” had a pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago last winter, drawing huge crowds but mixed reviews from critics there. Those reviews prompted Mr. Furman and the other lead producer, Stuart Oken, to hire the veteran Broadway director Jerry Zaks to take over the show from its two directors, the Broadway newcomers Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, and ostensibly fix “The Addams Family” before opening in New York.
The Addams Family is Headed to Hollywood!
The Addams Family is apparently headed to Hollywood!
Deadline.com is reporting that Tim Burton has his eye on The Addams Family for his next animated 3D project, following the success of Alice In Wonderland, now playing.
Writes Deadline.com: “[Burton] will direct a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams’ original ghoulish cartoon drawings of The Addams Family. Illumination Entertainment, the Universal-based family film unit headed by Chris Meledandri, has acquired the underlying rights of the Addams drawings, once a staple of The New Yorker magazine.” Burton’s film, like the Broadway in previews musical starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, will be inspired by these original drawings and will be unrelated to the previous film and television imaginings of the famous goth family.
The production is currently seeking a writer. The film will be produced by Meladandri, and Kevin Miserocchi of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation. Burton’s additional animated features include Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. He additionally wrote and produced The Nightmare Before Christmas and produced 9.
Click here to read Deadline.com article.
Addams Family Musical Stars Chat with USA Today
by Todd Plitt, USA Today
‘Addams Family’ stars: Kooky, spooky, in no way spoofy
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth may be dressed in black — a color also favored by Gomez and Morticia Addams, whom they play in the new Broadway musical The Addams Family— but there’s not a whiff of the macabre in the stars’ relaxed conversation.
And perhaps that’s fitting. Based on the Charles Addams cartoons that inspired the hit TV series of the 1960s, this new adaptation — with a book by Jersey Boys librettists Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and a score by Andrew Lippa— presents a happy, loving family. “It’s just that everything they like happens to be the opposite of what ‘normal’ people like,” Lane says.
Chatting hours before a recent preview at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where The Addams Family opens April 8, Lane and Neuwirth discuss the pressures and pleasures of bringing their iconic characters to the stage.
Q: When did you first become familiar with the Addams Family?
Neuwirth: I watched the show on television as a little girl, then discovered the cartoons when I got a bit older.
Lane: I watched the show first, too, and loved it.
Neuwirth: Did you want to be Gomez?
Lane: Nah, I didn’t project myself into it. I just thought it was really fun and different. It only ran for a couple of seasons, but they were obviously memorable.
Q: How about Morticia, Bebe? She’s the first character you’re creating for a new Broadway musical.
Neuwirth: I loved Morticia so much as a girl. I think many women love her; she’s really archetypal. So it’s very important to me that she’s represented properly — that she doesn’t have anything dopey to do or say, or anything that isn’t honest. I feel I have to take care of her.
Q: Word is that this show takes its spirit from Charles Addams’ cartoons. Is there anything that will surprise people who are only familiar with the TV series?
Neuwirth: Its depth.
Lane: Yes, I think we win them over with humor and then …
Neuwirth: Then we sock ‘em in the solar plexus!
Lane: People will expect to laugh and have a good time, but maybe not to be moved by it. But there are some very touching moments.
Neuwirth: The big musical theater moments are there, but they happen in a way that’s true to the Addams Family. There are no sequins on this stage. Nobody wears anything shiny.
Q: Gomez and Morticia are a pretty hot couple. How do you get that chemistry across?
Neuwirth (coyly): You’ll see. Look, these people love each other, they love their family. They love their pets. The boy (the Addams’ son, Pugsley, played by Adam Riegler) has a big lizard, but he loves it like a puppy dog.
Lane: It’s just great fun to be them, you know? For me, it’s been joyous to play someone who is so positive about everything. That’s the opposite of me.
Q: After the show’s run in Chicago last year, (veteran director) Jerry Zaks was brought in as a creative consultant. There was speculation that the darker, more sophisticated humor of the cartoons didn’t translate for audiences expecting to see the TV show replicated. Any truth to that?
Neuwirth: That had nothing to do with it. The show was very good in Chicago; we packed the house every night, and they stood up and cheered. But a good show can get better.
Lane: The producers felt we needed a fresh pair of eyes, and fortunately, Jerry agreed to work with us. And he’s been able to come in like a Jewish Ty Pennington and give us an extreme makeover. But that’s how shows have been created for years — friends give advice, people help.
Neuwirth: You go out of town, you make changes and it keeps evolving.
Lane: Of course, this is a high-profile show, so everyone’s got an opinion. People say (affects a lofty tone), “It’s the most highly anticipated musical of the season.” It’s like you’re being set up for a fall. We’ve done a tremendous amount of work, and there’s more to come. A lot of fun, but a lot of work, too.
“Charles Addams New York” Exhibit Opens at the MCNY
Last night was opening night for the new Charles Addams exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. And I happened upon this fantastic post on the EditouristNYC blog, which I have copied here verbatim – right down to the pictures. I hope you enjoy it - I know I did!
The Addams Family (image © the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation)
Andrew and I were lucky enough to score an invite to the Charles Addams’ show opening tonight, and I couldn’t be happier that we went. The exhibit is well-designed, interesting, pertinent, and extremely entertaining. I suspect I’ll be back before it ends in May.
The macabre comedic genius that is Charles Addams will never, in my opinion, be topped in the world of the print cartoon. It may seem strange to place the words “macabre” and “comedic” in such close proximity to each other, but if you have any awareness of the
Addams Family, you know what I’m saying. The exhibit places the Addams Family into a surprising context. Addams used these characters and their relations to each other to comment on the ideal nuclear family of the time. His work comments on other societal and political norms as well, from the “battle of the sexes,” to pop culture and media, to technology, to the economy, and so on.
Addams’ cartoons can easily be taken for granted: a timely joke here, an ironic, postcard-worthy cartoon there. Of course, the creation of the Addams Family was no small task. However, it wasn’t until tonight, seeing so many of his creations in one place, that I truly felt I understood the overwhelming impact of his work: It forces New Yorkers to stand back and look at themselves, for better or for worse.
And stand back and look at themselves they did. Almost as intriguing as viewing Addams’ cartoons was watching the others guests’ reactions and listening in on their discussions. It seemed that every person found something of themselves in one image or another. My favorite reactions of the night revolved around Addams’ depiction of a harried man carrying his jewelry-drenched wife into a pawn shop: “Oh, that’s horrible,” one older woman said to another, passing quickly by. Less than two minutes later, two men stopped in front of the cartoon and let out full-on belly laughs. Like it or not, Addams strikes a chord.
(image © the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation)
What I find truly amazing is how his pieces take on such contrasting tones. As Andrew and I walked around the room tonight, we found ourselves continually surprised. One image made us laugh, while the next on the wall caused us to think, “Yeah, I can relate to that,” in a sad sort of way. Specifically, Addams’ series of wind-up men, roboting around the city until winding out of energy, comes to mind. He depicts them big and small, alone on the side of the street or shuttling around in huge masses. Sure, the comparison between people and machines has been made before—who hasn’t suffered the rat-race rush through Penn Station in the morning? I know I have—but the idea of people as wind-up toys is something different, and deflating. So much of his work that was relevant during his time remains relevant today and, I suspect, will remain relevant for ages to come.
(And speaking of relevant, this night has absolutely upped my anticipation level for the new Addams Family musical.)
BroadwayWorld.com Giving Away Tickets to The First Preview of The Addams Family Musical!
BroadwayWorld.com will be giving away TWO pairs of FREE tickets to the The Addams Family Musical’s eagerly anticipated first preview on Monday night, March 8th at 8:00 pm!
Each day this week (Monday, March 1 - Friday, March 5) they’ll be asking a new trivia question.
Answer each question correctly and you could win!
The first question is:
Which magazine notably published cartoons of Charles Addams’ famous family?
a. New York Magazine
b. The New Yorker
c. The Saturday Evening Post
d. TIME
Click here to visit the site and play!
Charles Addams Artwork To Be Featured In NY Museum Exhibit
Whether you live in the New York area, or will be in town to see the new Addams Family musical, you may want to drop by the Museum of the City of New York and check out the Charles Addams’s New York exhibit, which will be on display from March 4 to May 16.
Charles Addams’s New York is an exhibition of original artworks by the legendary New Yorkercartoonist that capture Addams’s quintessentially idiosyncratic and slyly subversive view of the city, depicting his signature macabre characters, twisted situations, and distorted reimaginings of the cityscape. The works in the exhibition include watercolors, preliminary pencil sketches, completed cartoons, and examples of published work from the cover of the New Yorker. The subjects are gleefully varied, ranging from charming to creepy; they include depictions of life on New York’s subways and buses, in offices, department stores, museums, parks, streets, and homes. A special section will look at the evolution of the creepy assemblage of characters who were dubbed “the Addams Family” as they developed as mainstays of Addams’s cartoons, moving through the streets of his New York and adding to the sense of mischief and deviancy that characterized the world as he saw it. (from The Daily Cartoonist)
Addams’ work is the direct inspiration for the new Broadway musical, The Addams Family, which begins preview performances on March 8 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Click here for ticket information.
For more information on the Museum of the City of New York, click here.
A Look At What’s “Troubling” The Addams Family
Hiring Jerry Zaks as a “creative consultant” to the Addams Family team (see Tony Award Winner Jerry Zaks Joins Addams Family Creative Team) has left the door open for speculation that the bound for Broadway show is in trouble. And while the producers emphasize that the show is not in trouble, they do acknowledge that the musical needs changes to improve its hopes for a long run and a potentially lucrative life as a touring production. That makes perfect sense to me, and I feel confident that the hugely talented creative team of the Addams Family Musical will happily make the changes necessary to bring a smash hit show to Broadway on April 8.
But it does make one wonder….what causes what many believed to be a sure-fire hit not so sure-fire? Many have jumped at the opportunity to answer that question, and an article earlier this month by Patrick Healy of the NY Times, in my opinion, does a great job of getting to the meat of the issue: “What works brilliantly in morbidly hilarious cartoons …is a tougher trick to translate to live theater…” And he doesnt’ stop there. Healy did his research and put together an article that takes an in depth look into the challenges of transforming “… a series of darkly witty moments — some even without captions…” into a successful Broadway musical.
That Old Black Magic, So Hard to Recapture
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 5, 2010, NY Times
CHICAGO — Among the dozens of cartoons that Charles Addams drew of his devilishly subversive Addams family is one in which Gomez and Morticia; their daughter, Wednesday; son, Pugsley; and manservant, Lurch, are admiring the view from their new picture window. The view is of a cemetery crowded with tombstones.
A cemetery is also the setting of the first scene of the new “Addams Family” musical, now finishing a tryout here before its scheduled arrival on Broadway in March. In that opening number, “Clandango,” the family dances and sings about loyalty to the Addams way of life; a chorus rollicks around the stage carrying gravestones; and Morticia and Wednesday team up for a mother-daughter tap dance atop a coffin.
What works brilliantly in morbidly hilarious cartoons, however, is a tougher trick to translate to live theater, as the producers of “The Addams Family” have learned.While the musical has drawn huge audiences here, it has received mixed reviews from critics and raised enough concerns for the producers that last week they took the unusual step of hiring the Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks to take over and work with the creative team to make 11th-hour fixes to the production, which stars Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia.
Unlike most musical adaptations for Broadway, which come from movies or books, the producers of “The Addams Family” musical chose to base their show on Addams’s cartoons, mainly published in The New Yorker magazine in the 1940s and ’50s. Preferring to eschew the slapstick humor of the popular “Addams Family” television show of the 1960s and three movies in the ’90s, the producers have said their goal was to create a musical that reflected the mordant wit of the cartoons, like the famous one of Gomez, Morticia and Lurch preparing to pour a cauldron of boiling oil on a group of Christmas carolers.
The Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, which holds the copyrights to all of Addams’s works, granted the rights for a Broadway musical to one of the show’s lead producers, Stuart Oken, because he shared the foundation’s desire “to ignore all previous interpretations of the characters known as the Addams family and to create a new story based solely upon the cartoons by Charles Addams,” H. Kevin Miserocchi, the executive director of the foundation and one of its two trustees, said in an e-mail message.
The challenge is undoubtedly steep, given Addams’s ingenuity.
The Addams Family Musical Review “Recap”
Broadway In Chicago’s pre-Broadway world premiere presentation of The Addams Family, a new musical based on the bizarre family of characters created by legendary cartoonist Charles Addams, opened Wednesday, December 9 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts’ Oriental Theater. The production continues in Chicago through January 10, and will play Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre beginning March 4, with an anticipated opening date of April 8.
The musical stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia Adams, with Kevin Chamberlin (Uncle Fester), Jackie Hoffman (Grandmama), Zachary James (Lurch), Adam Riegler (Pugsley), and Krysta Rodriguez (Wednesday) rounding out the “Family”. Playing the “family who comes to dinner” are Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello as Mal and Alice Beineke, and Wesley Taylor as Lucas Beineke, Wednesday’s love interest.
The production features direction and design by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
Wednesday night’s performance was attended by many critics whose reactions are mixed, but the consensus is decidedly positive. Excerpts of some of those reviews follow:
By Hedy Weiss, Theater Critic, The Chicago Sun Times
“…there is rarely a dull moment as each grand shock of the new, each adjustment to change, each recognition of aging and each surprising rebirth wraps its arms itself around the characters of “The Addams Family.”
By Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
Bebe Neuwirth Brings To Life The Macabre Morticia
- Photo: Mark Hanauer; Photo Illustration: Jamie DiVecchio Ramsay
Surely the decision took all of two seconds: Whom to cast as Morticia in the new musical The Addams Family? Who else but pale, raven-haired, two-time Tony Award–winner Bebe Neuwirth? The musical-theater vet stars opposite Nathan Lane in the musical based on the Charles Addams cartoons, which, after premiering in Chicago, will make its Broadway debut in March. Neuwirth recently called before a day of tech rehearsal.
Time Out Chicago: I was at a drag show last night, and the very first performer was Morticia Addams. You must realize your Morticia will inspire drag queens for years to come.
Bebe Neuwirth: [Laughs] Morticia is archetypal, so I’m not at all surprised somebody’s doing her. She’s—somebody said something about being goth, but I thought, Well, she’s goth before there was goth. People expect me to wear black nail polish, but that’s more what goth has become. That’s a little bit too obvious.
TOC: Well, I’m sure you’ll at least be a much more attractive Morticia than this guy was.
BN: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen some very beautiful drag queens.
TOC: It did raise a larger question: What’s it like to create a character who’s already so deeply etched in the popular imagination?
If you’re gonna play an archetype, you have to make her specific for you: What specific qualities are there for you to play?
TOC: So how do you answer that question here?
BN: Well, that’s a question I would prefer not to answer. [Laughs]
TOC: Why’s that?
BN: Because when you’re working on a character, there are aspects that, for me as an actress, I prefer not to talk about with anyone because it dissipates the energy and the focus…. I actually haven’t told my husband anything about the show because—
TOC: Your own husband?
BN: Yeah. That’s really hard.
Talking With Lurch (Zachary James)
Addams Family – an interview with Lurch (Zachary James)
One could easily make the assumption that Zachary James will be playing quite possibly the most intriguing Lurch ever written, with a musical surprise coming from the man Charles Addams described as a “towering mute.”
This extremely tall (possibly 12 feet?) handsome, bald man has his character Lurch’s physical demeanor down pat – when he demonstrated how Lurch stands hunched over with his arms locked straight holding a serving tray at his knees, he had me sold. In addition to this, James just happens to be a talented and accomplished opera singer as well as proven acting ability to go along with his powerful voice
James gave credit to producer Stuart Oken saying,
“Stuart took the time to look at each individual.”
James said that the talent in all aspects of this production, on stage and off stage, is what will make Addams Family a great musical.
Admitting to being nervous at first knowing he’d be working with Bebe Neuwirth (Morticia) and Nathan Lane (Gomez), James’ admission that, as a kid, he had watched the movie “Bird On a Wire” over a dozen times proved how he could be slightly intimidated to work with Lane.
Nathan Lane talks “Addams Family”
This article appeard in the November 15 issue of The Chicago Tribune:
Nathan Lane in “The Addams Family” embraces an emotional Gomez
Stage musical opening in Chicago
By Chris Jones Tribune critic
For Nathan Lane, the fall of 2003 in Chicago was the happiest of times. The out-of-town tryout of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” which starred Lane and Matthew Broderick as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, was greeted by cheering Chicagoans right from the first public performance. “In Chicago, they were even laughing at the bad stuff,” Lane recalled over dinner at Petterino’s, his favorite theater-district haunt. “When we got off stage that first time, Matthew and I said to each other, well, it won’t be like that every night. But it was.”
With his beloved (and now deceased) wife Anne Bancroft at his side in Chicago, Brooks was in a similarly ebullient mood. “We had a birthday party for Anne right in this restaurant,” Lane recalled, scanning the crowded room as a wistful expression crossed his face. “And Mel got up on a table and sang ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’ ”
Lane was in a strikingly emotional mood a few days before his first public performance as Gomez Addams of “The Addams Family,” which he said will be his 17th Broadway show (”that must be more than Marian Seldes”).
He had been coaxed into the project — and away from another more tenuous Broadway project — when writer Marshall Brickman called him and said the very thing that torpedoes the defenses of every actor: “We wrote this part with you in mind.”
Of course, because Lane happens to be the biggest living star of American musical comedy, that statement doubtless also had the rare, additional virtue of being true.
Lane’s accessible emotions are, of course, the root of his comic brilliance. But he said they had also been sparked by Gomez,
Addams Family Musical Blows Into Chicago
“The Addams Family,” a new musical take on the beloved Charles Addams cartoons, blows into Chicago’s Ford Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, November 13. Starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, and featuring a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), The Addams Family is perhaps the most anticipated show of the 2009-10 Broadway season.
