I opened the bag of Christmas mail yester day and out tumbled a couple of missives from the gang at “The Addams Family,” the $15 million Broadway-bound musical trying out in Chicago.
My good friend Nathan Lane, who’s playing Gomez, took issue with a couple of points I made in Wednesday’s column about all the directors — Mike Nichols, Jerry Zaks, Robert Falls — who’ve looked at the show and given notes on how to fix it for New York.
I cheekily called Nathan a “fixture at the Fours Seasons spa,” where one of my spies overheard him venting about the production. I also noted that Twyla Tharp‘s new show, “Come Fly With Me,” could steal the spotlight in the spring if “The Addams Family” doesn’t get better.
Nathan writes:
Dear Michael,
Just for the record, I am not a fixture at the Four Seasons spa, nor would I discuss the show in public in the manner you described . . .
Everyone on the creative team is working very hard to bring the best possible show into New York. I don’t have to tell you, but I’m going to anyway: Birthing a new musical is no day at the beach. As Larry Gelbart said, “If Hitler’s alive, I hope he’s out of town with a new musical.”
After your column today, I feel [Hitler] might be working for the New York Post.
‘Tis the season of giving, so give us a break!
I pray that [on Christmas Eve] you will be visited by three spirits, and that by Christmas morning you will be a changed man.
Or maybe you’ll just be visited by three Teamsters who will BEAT the spirit of Christmas into you.
I can only pray.
Happy Holidays, and see you in the spring.
P.S. I hope you and Twyla will be very happy together.
XO Nathan.
I also heard from Rick Elice, who co-wrote the script with Marshall Brickman (they also wrote the terrific “Jersey Boys”).
While some key members of the creative team — the directors, the designers, the choreographer — have gone off to sunny places for the holidays, Rick wanted me to know that he and Marshall, along with composer Andrew Lippa, are staying in Chicago working on the show.
“We are not casually lounging in the tropics, nor even visiting tanning salons on the Upper West Side,” Rick writes.
“We’re at work every day, amidst the snow and the shoppers, which is precisely where we want to be. It’s not easy work, but it’s a glorious challenge [and] I wouldn’t trade anything for it. Certainly not the beach, a tan or a mai-tai. Yes, it means we must share your pasty complexion, but we wear ours as a badge of honor.
“Hope your holidays are filled with the leisure time about which you seem to enjoy writing. As for me, back to work.”
As it turns out, I’m working, too, Rick.
In fact, touched as we are by Nathan’s letter, Twyla and I have decided to go to Chicago and give you guys some notes.
We’ve booked a couple of spa treatments at the Four Seasons, but once we’ve had our facials, it’s gonna be all hands on deck to save the show!
THE Times’ Pat Healy reported last week that Horton Foote’s “The Orphans’ Home Cycle,” a nine-hour, three-part epic at the Signature Theater Company, may transfer to the Golden Theatre on Broadway in the spring.
Pat consulted “three people involved in the production, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion about a transfer was meant to be private.”
I consulted three tea leaves yesterday and discovered that the transfer is probably off. The cost is so high that investors would have very little chance of getting their money back.
The next tenant at the Golden will be the great Brian Dennehy in a double bill of O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape,” according to three people involved in the production, who spoke on condition of anonymity because news of the production was meant to be private until it was officially announced in the Times.