Last night I saw a new show that is just leaving the nest. A show with lush music, amazingly endearing performances, and an iconic template that’s been around for sixty some-odd years. That show was The Addams Family and if you don’t have tickets now, trust me, you won’t be able to get them.
First, let me say this: Lippa, Lippa, Lippa, Andrew Lippa I love you and your work. I’ll come back to him, but to be frank, his work is the most amazing part of the show.
I actually sat and wrote out the entire show story as best as I could remember, but I decided to distill it down to this: drop what you think you know about the family because it’s all been turned upside down. The genius of the story lies in how people will go into the show expecting one thing, but end up delighted when they find another. The story is as old as the hills, but with a twist. A very un-typical family dealing with very typical family issues.
I’m a lifer here in Chicago, having never lived anywhere else. Part of the reason I used to travel to Broadway to see productions being born in NYC was because I knew I’d see some techno-wizardry on stage, usually a cut above what we see in Chicago. Times, they are a-changin’ folks, and The Addams Family is proof of that. The stagecraft is amazingly complex, perhaps the most complicated I’ve personally seen in town.
There are a couple I-can’t-believe-I’m-seeing-that-on-stage tricks (think Wicked when Elphie flies) that aren’t done just for the sake of the trick. They really do unfold the story even further. Seeing Wednesday torture Pugsley by drawing during a song called “Pulled” is one of the early clues that any stage trickery you see has a point. Watching Uncle Fester dance with the moon (who he has fallen in love with) was hilariously funny and endearing. And the squid. Well, I’ll leave the squid to both your curiosity and imagination.
Take that NYC! We got yo’ fancy tricks covered!
And we got yo’ actors too. Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane are headlining the cast. They’re stellar, duh, but it wasn’t until their main tango/flamenco number that you really see both of them shine. I’d honestly watch Bebe Neuwirth kick a tin can down an alley because really, she’d be so über graceful and slinky while she did it, how could you not want to see her move? They received two rounds of applause at the end of the scene during which she was in a deep bend forward, toes pointed (there must be some dance term for such things, but I don’t know it), thigh-high boots screaming with sex appeal, pale white skin peeking out from her neckline that plunged “down to Venezuela” and holding headless rose stem in her mouth.
I nearly had wood folks.
The remainder of the cast is equally as stellar, with an Uncle Fester singing about things you’d never expect Fester to sing about (remember what I said earlier?) and two dinner guests who find themselves (and more) in the Addams Manor. Carolee Carmello, who plays Alice Beineke, has the biggest transformation of the show and let me tell you, when she growls it out during the song called “Waiting” near the end of the first act, my jaw was on the floor. Her husband, Mal Beineke (Terrence Mann) also gets the chance to let it all out after an encounter with the squid. Damn, I wasn’t going to bring up the squid again. Oh well, sue me.
But Andrew Lippa. Oh Andrew Lippa. Do you ever write a bad turn of phrase? Do you ever misplace a note on the page? I think not. I have to admit, I fell for Andrew Lippa’s style hook, line, and sinker when I saw a mounting of Asphalt Beach as part of the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern. Much to my extreme sadness, the show never made it past that venue (that I know of) and I’m still Desperately Seeking the Soundtrack or ANY recordings of it.
His book and music are genius. Above the stage design, above the voices, and above the headliners, the book and music in The Addams Family are the real stars. I described the music as lush earlier, and I honestly can’t think of a better adjective. Hats off to the musicians who performed the work, a mini-orchestra who delivered the kind of sound you’d expect in the old MGM masterpieces. AND the show started with an overture of the delights to come. So few shows do that these days. I think it gets lost on the audience.
I’ll say it again, if you don’t have tickets, you’re gonna miss it, and that’d be bad. Will I travel to NYC to see it? Natch. But I love that I could support yet another great opening here in Chitown. If you’re a local yokel, I hope you see it too. And lemme know what you think.