As both Hollywood and Broadway plunged into the now-decades-old age of the remake, “The Addams Family” was bound to return. Based on the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams and their adaptation into a 1964-66 TV situation comedy, the comically macabre characters have been resurrected in multiple films, as well as a stage musical and a very popular Netflix series called “Wednesday.”
Renee Kathleen Koher (Morticia Addams) and Rodrigo Aragon (Gomez Addams) in the North American touring production of “The Addams Family.” (Sarah Smith / NWCC)
Your latest opportunity to find out why pop culture has so avidly embraced these characters is a touring production of the 2010 musical that has brought the creepy old Addams mansion to the Ordway Music Theater stage for a week.
Tuesday’s opening night performance gave some clues as to why the Addamses endure. Their wildly off-kilter ways were an open rebellion against the “normal” in 1964 and — seeing as conservative conventionality has made such a comeback in our country — the time might be right for a reprise of that message. Alas, Big League Productions’ touring version lacks the spirit of adventure that could make it rewarding or revelatory.
Much of the fault lies with the script by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and the songs of Andrew Lippa. That team has been trying to figure out an interesting story to tell with these characters for 15 years now, tweaking as they go, but I came away feeling as if I’d experienced an hour’s worth of story and solid songs presented over the course of two hours and 45 minutes.
Characters can only get you so far without a story, and this plot is particularly conventional. Oldest child Wednesday is now an adult, one secretly engaged to a “normal” young man from Ohio, and she’s invited his parents to dinner to meet her decidedly out-of-the-ordinary family. That’s the gist of it, the action hanging on the flimsy premise that father Gomez keeping their engagement a secret will somehow damage his marriage to Morticia.
What remains is a series of character studies, mostly in song. But only four of the 26 tunes are musically memorable, most notably the spicy salsa intro to the clan, “When You’re an Addams,” and Morticia’s clever, Vaudeville-esque dance with death, “Just Around the Corner.” Younger brother Pugsly’s “What If” is a sweet ballad (kudos to Logan Clinger, the only performer who seemed to crack the code of the Ordway sound system and make every word understandable), as is Gomez’s “Happy/Sad,” addressed to his departing daughter.
While Rodrigo Aragon does fine things with Gomez, this musical makes him far too typical a father, while unpredictability is what established the Addams brand. Meanwhile, Renee Kathleen Koher’s tepid take on Morticia is as colorless as her corpse-like makeup. There’s almost none of the steamy, spontaneous sexual energy that John Astin and Carolyn Jones brought to the TV show. Similarly, Melody Munitz portrays the linchpin character of Wednesday with a relatively expressionless paucity of spark.
That said, Randel Wright’s deliciously gloomy set and Tristan Raines’ imaginative costuming make it an enjoyable show to look at, something aided greatly by the enthusiasm of the ancestors who’ve dropped in from the afterlife to take in this meeting of two families. Would that they had something more interesting to observe.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.
Big League Productions’ ‘The Addams Family’
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul.
Tickets: $154-$45, available at 651-224-4222 or ordway.org
Capsule: A musical that makes the unpredictable eccentrics way too normal.
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