CHICAGO — “The Addams Family” is well-positioned to be the crowd-pleasing, commercial hit of the spring season. It’s got a famous title, a big star (Nathan Lane), a script by the creators of “Jersey Boys” (Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman) and a budget of about $15 million.
But it’s not snapping yet.
The musical opened here at the gorgeous Oriental Theater Wednesday night to mixed reviews, and the sense you get from talking (on and off the record) to production members is that there’s a fair amount of revamping to do before “The Addams Family” hits New York in March.
The affable Elice joked that his holiday trip to Bermuda was contingent upon how tough certain critics and columnists would be on the show. If they had fun, maybe he could take some time off in the sun. If not, he’d have to bundle up to endure the Chicago winter (it was zero degrees yesterday) and get to work on the rewrites.
He’s at Marshall Field’s right now buying a pair of earmuffs.
The creators are poring over Chris Jones‘ lukewarm but constructive review in the Chicago Tribune. Jones’ basic complaint is that the show is cluttered and unfocused, capturing only in fits and starts the wonderful creepiness of Charles Addams’ popular characters.
“This show pulls itself in new narrative directions so fast and so far,” he wrote, “you don’t get enough of a chance to enjoy the Addamses being the
Addamses.”
(The Sun-Times was much more positive — it called the show “winningly lunatic” — but added that some nips and tucks wouldn’t hurt.)
“I think there are many constructive points in Chris’ review,” lead producer Stuart Oken told me. “Our job is to see that the iconic nature of the characters comes through. We have four months before we open in New York. We’re going to regroup and do the work.”
Oken said Elice, Brickman and composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa were “going away to work on some big ideas,” though what those “big ideas” were, he didn’t say.
“I do not think we are on a path to a major overhaul,” he allowed, “but there will be some new songs and scenes that deepen and clarify the story.”
Rather than base their show on the campy ’60s TV series of the same name, the creators of “The Addams Family” went back to the New Yorker cartoons to fashion an original story.
In the musical, Wednesday falls in love with a nice boy from Ohio. His conservative parents come to dinner at the Addams’ spooky mansion — in Central Park — and much hilarity is supposed to ensue.
This, of course, is the stuff of “You Can’t Take It With You,” “La Cage aux Folles” and “The In-Laws”: A “normal family” clashes with a family of eccentrics and, after farcical complications, learns some heartwarming life lessons.
There’s grumbling that the “normal” family — played by Terrence Mann (Dad), Carolee Carmello (Mom) and Wesley Taylor (Son) — has too much stage time, pulling the focus away from the Addamses.
Carmello has a very strange song called “Waiting” in which she admits to a deeply unhappy secret life. It’s a powerful psycho-
logical number but perhaps more at home in “Next to Normal.”
Meanwhile, characters everybody knows and loves — Lurch and Grandmama — don’t have much to do. Uncle Fester, played by the winning Kevin Chamberlin, functions as a sort of narrator, until he finally finds his own subplot.
Jackie Hoffman‘s a hoot as Grandmama — she’s got the two biggest laughs in the show — but disappears for most of Act 2. As Gomez, Lane is at the top of his game, getting big laughs even with lines that aren’t all that funny. But as one person points out, he spends a lot of time sitting on the couch watching the others.
A serious problem — one I hear is causing tension backstage — is what to do with Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia. Physically, the Tony-winning star looks the part. She’s pale, sexy, gorgeous. And she dances as well as any chorus girl half her age. But she’s not a strong presence in the show, and her dramatic crisis (“I’m getting old”) makes no sense since Morticia is a vampire: Unless they’re caught in the sun, vampires don’t have to worry about crow’s feet.
In his review, Jones noted that Neuwirth “looks like she’s not having much fun.”
Neuwirth, as smart an actress as you’re going to find, knows the role isn’t working yet. I’m told she went to the directors — Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, who created the acclaimed and seriously creepy “Shockheaded Peter” — and begged for help. Their response, according to a production source, was along the lines of: “You’re an actress. You figure out the character.”
Sources say that, when it comes to plot and character, McDermott and Crouch aren’t quite as surefooted as they are on concept and design.
Roy Furman, another producer, says he’s confident the directors could bring Neuwirth up to the level of her co-stars.
“I am sure they can,” he says. “This is a very tight team. Bebe is an extraordinary company member, and her chemistry with Nathan gets better and better. She gets stronger and stronger with each performance.”
Is there any chance of anyone being replaced?
“Other than Hugh Jackman coming in and bringing all his T-shirts with him,” Furman says, “we’re set.”