Neat and Sweet

The critics had been sharpening their knives for The Addams Family for months, so it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that they eviscerated this harmless, mediocre show. Don’t get me wrong—The Addams Family is not a great musical. But there’s nothing so dreadful in it to be worthy of the scorn that critics have gleefully heaped upon it since it opened.

No doubt they were expecting the dark and morbid New Yorker cartoons, which the creators publicly announced they would be returning to for the look and feel of the show. That they did (the fabulous costumes and sets are from Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch), but Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book reeks of the ’60s TV show. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (the films also claimed to have reached back to the original cartoons, but the plots don’t really hold up in the recounting), but it certainly comes as a disappointment to those who are expecting something different. The problem with The Addams Family is that expectations ran high, and the show itself is unable to live up to them.

Among those expectations was that Andrew Lippa would contribute a score that would be as ooky and kooky as Vic Mizzy’s theme song to the television show, but Lippa’s specialty is power pop, not idiosyncrasy. Thus we get an older Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez), pigtails gone, belting out numbers about falling in love with the normal Lucas (a solid Wesley Taylor) that sound like generic, cut songs from Legally Blonde. Only the second act number “Just Around the Corner,” sung by Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia, scores in the gleefully morbid department, while the rousing first act finale, “Full Disclosure” would feel entirely at home in an episode of the TV show. The rest are serviceable, at best.

Neuwirth is as pitch-perfect as imagined (who else could play the pale, languid Morticia with the correct amount of deadpan?), but Nathan Lane is a disaster as Gomez. Forgoing his Spanish accent for long stretches in order to better sell his Borscht Belt jokes as Nathan Lane, he also helpfully keeps audiences awake during Lippa’s dull songs for Gomez by singing flatly. Kevin Chamberlain shamelessly steals Jackie Coogan’s performance as Uncle Fester; Jackie Hoffman is fabulous if you like Jackie Hoffman, but those who don’t will not find a reason to start here; Adam Riegler can do little with Pugsley, who’s been written as desperately needy; and Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello are mostly wasted as Lucas’ “normal” parents, though Carmello nails the suburban matron wandering into the Addams’ world of gloom. Zachary James, however, is almost impossibly good as the mostly silent Lurch (until he must crack open his mouth to sing a feel-good Lippa song).

The clash between the two families that propels the first act dissipates completely in the limp second, as characters are separated only to be reunited for the rousing finale, “Move Toward the Darkness,” the most upbeat song about being pessimistic imaginable. Every generation gets the Addamses they deserve, I guess, and if that means that their Broadway incarnation is heavy on feel-good audience rousers and light on darkness, then we, who have embraced Mamma Mia! (and what would Morticia have made of that?), have gotten what we deserve: a generic, professional show about how utterly normal it is to be odd.

> [The Addams Family]

Open run, The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W. 46th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-307-4100; $51.50–$136.50.