The Addams Family

The largely admirable new musical based on cartoonist Charles Addams’s creations has a lot going for it, most notably director-designers McDermott and Crouch’s intimate understanding of Addams’s aesthetic and a cast to die for. The show’s creative team uses the familiar characters to tell a tale of the inherent compromises required by love (both familial and romantic) and the inevitability of change. The plot is macabre La Cage: Newly of-age Wednesday has fallen in love with a “normal” boy, and the Addamses welcome his white-bread parents for dinner; entropy ensues.

Brickman, Elice and Lippa use a vaudeville-style template, with most major characters getting spotlight moments in service of the larger story (Banana Shpeel’s David Shiner should be taking notes). This gives the show a truly ensemble feel, which may lead some to feel that above-the-title stars Lane and Neuwirth are underused. Neuwirth probably is, saddled with a clunker of a plotline about Morticia feeling old, but Lane amps up his every scene. Rodriguez and Taylor are appealing ingenues, and Carmello’s comic turn should be a career reboot after too many years languishing in Mamma Mia! Kevin Chamberlin also turns in strong work as Fester, particularly in a second-act number in which McDermott and Crouch use charmingly simple theatrical tricks to accomplish what other Broadway directors might have tricked out with high-tech flimflammery.

The pair’s Escher-esque concept for the Addams house, all broken shutters and endlessly twisting staircases, is full of surprises, as is Lippa’s varied score. The show’s major crime is its need for editing; even at a half hour shorter than it reportedly was at first preview, it still feels a half hour too long. An extended opening sequence is extraneous (particularly the awful opening number “Clandango”); Brickman and Elice’s book is weighted down with far too much exposition for characters we already know well, and some of Basil Twist’s puppetry set pieces slow the momentum without advancing the story. With a little more pruning, Addams could be a creepy, kooky delight.

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