Creepy, kooky, Chicago-bound and ooky

Chicago will get the first look at a new musical based on The Addams Family. The Broadway-bound show will have its out-of-town tryout at the Oriental Theatre starting November 13, 2009.

The new show has music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The creators are emphasizing that they're basing their work on the cartoons of Charles Addams , not on the ’60s TV show or the ’90s movies. I've been a fan of Addams's coolly creepy work since I was a kid, and I'd love to see a show more in keeping with the macabre mood of his stuff than the pun-heavy slapstick of the screen adaptations. I heard Lippa play a couple of Addams songs in his appearance at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts's Monday Nights New Voices series in August; a wistful number for Uncle Fester sounded especially promising, though I worry that his work (John & Jen, The Wild Party) is better suited to intimate productions. He wrote a couple of new songs for the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, but he's never had a full-length musical on Broadway.

As for Brickman and Elice, well, to say I didn't care for their most recent work would be putting it mildly. But the hiring of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, the dastardly duo behind Shockheaded Peter, to direct and design is heartening.

No casting has been announced yet, but a reading this summer was led by Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia. If that's not downright perfect I don't know what is. Cross your fingers.