Addams Family Insight from Andrew Lippa

Andrew Lippa

Playbill.com’s Robert Simonson had a “BRIEF ENCOUNTER With Andrew Lippa” recently in Chicago, during which Lippa offered this intriguing insight into the writing of the lyrics for The Addams Family Musical:

Playbill.com: … So how do you write music for characters who are “creepy and kooky”? Did you have to employ a whole new lyrical vocabulary?

Andrew Lippa: (Laughs) Writing the lyrics has been a great joy, because these characters get to say things that other people don’t get to say. There are mentions of certain ailments and certain personality defects, and yet you have to be careful. Ultimately, you don’t want to offend anyone. During development, we all probably crossed a line or two trying to sort out that really, really fine Charles Addams line between funny and not funny. That’s been a real challenge. Musically, we’re writing a musical about a family. We underscored the word family in the Addams Family. And this family is multi-generational. I decided the score was going to represent that notion. The score’s very character-based, and each of the characters sings in [his or her] own language. Gomez is represented by Flamenco-style Spanish music; and Wednesday is represented by a certain amount of contemporary pop music; and Uncle Fester is old vaudevillian in our show, and he’s sort of the host of our evening, so he speaks in a vaudeville presentation style.

Click here to read Playbill.com’s article in it’s entirety.