All Entries in the "Bebe Neuwirth" Category

USA Today’s Video Interview with Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane

USA Today has a video interview up with THE ADDAMS FAMILY stars – Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth:

Wanna Know How Nathan Lane Refers to Michael Riedel?

New York magazine chats with Bebe Neuwirth about her thoughts on The Addams Family experience; and reveals co-star Nathan Lane’s “pet” name for Post theatre columnist Michael Riedel:

Her Kooky Destiny

As Morticia Addams, Bebe Neuwirth is hoping for a perfect fit

I gave a lousy show last night,” Bebe Neuwirth says about fifteen minutes into a chat in her dressing room at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.  It seems she fell victim to the storied theater curse that is the “second show,” in which, as Neuwirth explains it, the relief of nailing a part in the first performance before a paying audience leads to a deceptively difficult following night.  “It’s a trade secret,” she says.  When I note that the cheering audience didn’t seem to notice, Neuwirth immediately regrets her candor:  Leaning into the digital recorder at her knee, and with a pointed look in my direction, she says, “I don’t want anyone to tell them I had a bad show!”

Sorry, but what might in another context serve as a cheap gotcha provides a humanizing moment for Neuwirth, who, in her 25 years in show business, has excelled at the stylized and remote.  As shrink Lilith Sternin on Cheers, she etched pop culture’s platonic ideal of an ice queen.  Her 1996 Tony-winning turn in Chicago as Velma—little black minidress, big red lips, blinding white skin—was an equally iconic take on a brassy Broadway siren.  Her current role, as Morticia, in the new, $16.5 million musical adaptation of The Addams Family (opening April 8), finds Neuwirth back in signature pallor and basic black.  Although the production is based on Charles Addams’s macabre drawings for The New Yorker, the 51-year-old Neuwirth took the part because of a childhood infatuation.  “Marshall Brickman called me up to say he’d written this musical, The Addams Family, and I just about screamed because I loved Carolyn Jones. Her Morticia [on the mid-sixties ABC sitcom] was really an archetypal character. As a child, I wanted to embody her qualities.”  Wry, stoic, and smarter than her hot-blooded mate (John Astin’s Gomez), TV’s Morticia was a dark prefeminist outlier in a TV landscape known more for the va-va-voom vacuity of Ginger, Mary Ann, and Jeannie.  “She wasn’t even part of that competition,” says Neuwirth.  “She was doing her own thing.  Who knows what that inner life of hers was, but she was hip.  You know, I think Rhea Perlman’s character on Cheers once referred to me as Morticia.”

There is a certain Shelley Duvall–playing–Olive Oyl inevitability to Neuwirth’s latest role.  “From the very top of the show, the audience sees Bebe and they go, ‘That’s Morticia,’ ” notes composer Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party).  “It’s like that feeling you get watching Barry Bonds at the plate; this fantastic moment where it looks like it’s going to be great … and then it is great.  And boy is that satisfying.”

This being Broadway, there’s the usual tabloid gossip of backstage bickering between Neuwirth and her Gomez, Nathan Lane.  “I was told Cindy Adams reported that we had a frosty relationship,” says Lane.  “And then [Post theater columnist] Michael Riedel—or as I like to call him, Rosemary’s Baby—picked up on that.  The most shocking thing about that is that Cindy Adams is still alive.  God bless her, still trying to stir it up, and I wish her well.  But it couldn’t be further from the truth.”  As Neuwirth puts it, “I think we both have a nice, healthy dose of diva.  But we also do really go together.  You’ve got the little clown running around, and you have a very still, dry person.  That’s a fun pairing.”

Neuwirth’s last extended appearance on Broadway was a second go-round with Chicago in 2006, that time as Roxie.  Since then, she’s mostly been offered TV roles.  But she finds regular series work, like her two short-lived Dick Wolf dramas Deadline (2000) and Law & Order:  Trial by Jury (2005), too ponderous.  “It’s the waiting around and the long hours on set,” says Neuwirth.  “I’m a dancer first, and a very physical person.  Even Cheers was difficult for me, and that’s one of the best shows ever.”  On the other hand, scripts were not “piling up outside my door … and being middle-aged makes it exponentially harder to find a role.  I don’t fit into the wives, mothers, and housewives stereotype.”

Unless it’s the sort of wife and mother who wears black gowns slit to here and dominatrix boots up to there.  (The boots were Neuwirth’s contribution to Morticia’s costume, revealed to thunderous audience approval.)  It’s been nearly two years since the actress did her first Addams Family table read.  After a commercially boffo but critically so-so holiday-season tryout on the road, the production has been, depending on whom you ask or read, tweaked, reshaped, or overhauled.  And that’s especially true of Morticia.  The show’s plot has a smitten Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez) rejecting her parents’ eccentricity in the hope of marrying a milquetoast small-town boy, spurring a conflict that leaves Morticia feeling old and irrelevant.  In the harshest of the out-of-town reviews, the Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones noted that Neuwirth “looks like she’s not having much fun.”  Neuwirth was stung by the comment but doesn’t necessarily disagree:  “In that production, Morticia was deeply, deeply unhappy from the middle of the first act through the end of the show.”

“That’s not a fun thing to play,” says Lane, “and it kind of undermined the character.”  The creative team, he adds, “had to find a wittier way of dealing with it and not make it her main story line.”  That, presumably, is part of the job of multi-Tony-winning director Jerry Zaks, who was brought in at the end of last year to consult with the show’s designer-director team, Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott (Shockheaded Peter).  Songs have been cut, others are still coming; Neuwirth is getting an upbeat number that will help tip Morticia away from concerned mom and back toward vamp.  “My forte is restrained sarcasm and a certain kind of bearing, which is what Morticia has also, so it’s a good match.  But the character wasn’t served as well as she could have been—the part stressed panic,” says Neuwirth, pointing out that Morticia doesn’t do panic.  “The show’s getting better all the time, but I don’t think it’s quite right yet.  I’m awaiting more wisecracks.”

Addams Family Musical Stars Chat with USA Today

by Todd Plitt, USA Today

‘Addams Family’ stars: Kooky, spooky, in no way spoofy

By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth may be dressed in black — a color also favored by Gomez and Morticia Addams, whom they play in the new Broadway musical The Addams Family— but there’s not a whiff of the macabre in the stars’ relaxed conversation.

And perhaps that’s fitting. Based on the Charles Addams cartoons that inspired the hit TV series of the 1960s, this new adaptation — with a book by Jersey Boys librettists Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and a score by Andrew Lippa— presents a happy, loving family. “It’s just that everything they like happens to be the opposite of what ‘normal’ people like,” Lane says.

Chatting hours before a recent preview at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where The Addams Family opens April 8, Lane and Neuwirth discuss the pressures and pleasures of bringing their iconic characters to the stage.

Q: When did you first become familiar with the Addams Family?

Neuwirth: I watched the show on television as a little girl, then discovered the cartoons when I got a bit older.

Lane: I watched the show first, too, and loved it.

Neuwirth: Did you want to be Gomez?

Lane: Nah, I didn’t project myself into it. I just thought it was really fun and different. It only ran for a couple of seasons, but they were obviously memorable.

Q: How about Morticia, Bebe? She’s the first character you’re creating for a new Broadway musical.

Neuwirth: I loved Morticia so much as a girl. I think many women love her; she’s really archetypal. So it’s very important to me that she’s represented properly — that she doesn’t have anything dopey to do or say, or anything that isn’t honest. I feel I have to take care of her.

Q: Word is that this show takes its spirit from Charles Addams’ cartoons. Is there anything that will surprise people who are only familiar with the TV series?

Neuwirth: Its depth.

Lane: Yes, I think we win them over with humor and then …

Neuwirth: Then we sock ‘em in the solar plexus!

Lane: People will expect to laugh and have a good time, but maybe not to be moved by it. But there are some very touching moments.

Neuwirth: The big musical theater moments are there, but they happen in a way that’s true to the Addams Family. There are no sequins on this stage. Nobody wears anything shiny.

Q: Gomez and Morticia are a pretty hot couple. How do you get that chemistry across?

Neuwirth (coyly): You’ll see. Look, these people love each other, they love their family. They love their pets. The boy (the Addams’ son, Pugsley, played by Adam Riegler) has a big lizard, but he loves it like a puppy dog.

Lane: It’s just great fun to be them, you know? For me, it’s been joyous to play someone who is so positive about everything. That’s the opposite of me.

Q: After the show’s run in Chicago last year, (veteran director) Jerry Zaks was brought in as a creative consultant. There was speculation that the darker, more sophisticated humor of the cartoons didn’t translate for audiences expecting to see the TV show replicated. Any truth to that?

Neuwirth: That had nothing to do with it. The show was very good in Chicago; we packed the house every night, and they stood up and cheered. But a good show can get better.

Lane: The producers felt we needed a fresh pair of eyes, and fortunately, Jerry agreed to work with us. And he’s been able to come in like a Jewish Ty Pennington and give us an extreme makeover. But that’s how shows have been created for years — friends give advice, people help.

Neuwirth: You go out of town, you make changes and it keeps evolving.

Lane: Of course, this is a high-profile show, so everyone’s got an opinion. People say (affects a lofty tone), “It’s the most highly anticipated musical of the season.” It’s like you’re being set up for a fall. We’ve done a tremendous amount of work, and there’s more to come. A lot of fun, but a lot of work, too.

The Addams Family One Of Week’s Top Broadway Grossers

Lunt-Fontanne current marquee, photo by Matthew Blank

Broadway box offices warmed up a bit this week, with The Addams Family, which began previews on March 8, proving one of the week’s top grossers.  The new musical, starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, brought in over $1.1 million in just seven performances, and filled the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to 98.6% capacity.   Impressive numbers indeed!

Here is a look at who was on top for the week ending March 14:

FRONTRUNNERS (By Gross)
1. Wicked ($1,505,286)
2. The Addams Family ($1,192,213)
3. The Lion King ($1,191,289)
4. Billy Elliot ($1,124,274)
5. Jersey Boys ($1,052,412)

New And Improved Addams Family Musical Hits Broadway Running

photo by Matt Hoyle

Seth Rudetsky Lunches With The Ladies of “The Addams Family”

On a recent Thursday, actor, writer, music director and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky had the pleasure (so it seems) of lunching with the ladies of The Addams Family.  He shares that experience in his February 1 Playbill.com article ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunched:

“…On Thursday I had lunch at delicious 44×10 with Bebe Neuwirth, Krysta Rodriguez, Carolee Carmello and Jackie Hoffman, who are the four leading ladies from the The Addams Family musical.  I’m writing a feature on them for the March Playbill, and we had a great/delicious time.  If you’ve seen Jackie’s Joe’s Pub shows, you’d know that she’s always complaining about not getting gigs. One of her biggest laments is about not even being able to get an audition for Fiddler on the Roof. Well, true to form, as soon as we sat down, she noticed that her bread plate was empty and she quipped, “Look! It’s just like Broadway.  I didn’t get a roll.”   Brava on the double meaning.  I bit into my delicious roll and asked her what the audition was like for the role of Grandma.  She remembered that she looked at the scene and noticed there was a little salty language in it, so she figured she could do one of her original songs.  The language in her act is more than a little salty, and this particular song is about her resenting being asked to do non-stop benefits.  It begins with:  “F*** you for asking me to do a show for free!” and then repeats that theme many times.  When the song was over, she received a sea of blank faces… and no call back.  However, that was for the initial workshop, and later on she was asked to go in again…this time for the Chicago-to-Broadway production.   She was slated to do the Doug Cohen/Douglas Carter Beane musical Big Time, which would mean that she’d have to choose between the two if she got cast as Grandma.  She knew she couldn’t sing the same song she sang before (non-stop cursing = blank British faces), so she decided to sing one of her songs from Big Time because it was fabulous and always brought down the house.  She told me that she “had the chutzpah” to call the composer and ask for a copy of the music…but not tell him she was using it to audition for a show that would prevent her doing his show!  He got the sheet music to her, she auditioned and got Addams Family and subsequently chose to leave Big Time.  Doug Cohen, the composer, called her a few days later and warily asked, “Jackie, did you use my song for your Addams Family audition?”  Jackie admitted she did.  She told me that she then literally heard a wail emanate from the phone.  The good news is Big Time was postponed, so hopefully she can eventually do both shows!

Speaking of auditions, Carolee was starring in Mamma Mia! when she was asked to come in for the reading of Addams Family.  She looked over the monologue and was surprised that there were all of these great Broadway ladies at the audition. S he then found out that the audition wasn’t for the reading, it was for the Broadway production!  She frantically took out the monologue and this time gave it more than a once over.  Apparently, she sassed her audition because she got the role of Alice Beineke.  She and Terrence Mann (the original Rum Tum Tugger in Cats) play a couple who are visiting the Addams family manse.  She told me that she and “Terry” have a completely different style of acting in a show eight times a week.  Carolee loves to figure out how something should be played and then lock it in.  Terry, who plays Mal Beineke, likes to make different choices each night.  And, I mean different.  Bebe said that there’s one entrance he does that has a totally new take each night.  At one performance it was sultry and seductive, and Bebe whispered to Nathan (Lane), “Here comes Barry White.”  The next night it was high energy and rock n’ roll-ish, and Nathan whispered, “Look.  It’s Rum Tum Mal.”
The ladies were all telling me that Jackie has a section of the show where she gets to improv, and I asked for an example.  Bebe told her to tell me about the Dec. 31 line.  Apparently, on that night, Grandma croaked out, “It’s New Year’s Eve.  I’m going to go up to my room for some Dick.  (long pause).  Clark.”

We were all talking about Jerry Zaks, who is coming in to oversee the production, and Bebe mentioned that he was in the original cast of Fiddler on the Roof. I nodded, but then said I thought it was the national tour.  She was adamant that it was the Broadway production because he knew a family friend of hers who played the Constable.  I then said that the Grease tour was his first big credit, and that happened in the 70’s and Fiddler was more of a 60’s show.  I mentioned that maybe the Constable did the tour as well.  I could tell the whole table was annoyed at my obsession with minutiae, so I decided to get to the bottom of it.  I whipped out my cell phone and texted Jerry.  Of course Jackie yelled, “You have his cell phone number?  I don’t have his cell phone number!”  I ignored her and typed away.  I wrote that I needed to know whether he did Fiddler on Broadway or on tour.  Lunch ended before I heard back from him, but as I walked up Ninth Avenue I got his text:  ”Alas.  Only on tour.”  HA! I don’t want to say, “I told you so, Bebe,”…so I’ll write it:  I told you so, Bebe…”

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A Look At What’s “Troubling” The Addams Family

Hiring Jerry Zaks as a “creative consultant” to the Addams Family team (see Tony Award Winner Jerry Zaks Joins Addams Family Creative Team) has left the door open for speculation that the bound for Broadway show is in trouble.  And while the producers emphasize that the show is not in trouble, they do acknowledge that the musical needs changes to improve its hopes for a long run and a potentially lucrative life as a touring production.  That makes perfect sense to me, and I feel confident that the hugely talented creative team of the Addams Family Musical will happily make the changes necessary to bring a smash hit show to Broadway on April 8. 

But it does make one wonder….what causes what many believed to be a sure-fire hit not so sure-fire?  Many have jumped at the opportunity to answer that question, and an article earlier this month by Patrick Healy of the NY Times, in my opinion, does a great job of getting to the meat of the issue: “What works brilliantly in morbidly hilarious cartoons …is a tougher trick to translate to live theater…”  And he doesnt’ stop there. Healy did his research and put together an article that takes an in depth look into the challenges of transforming “… a series of darkly witty moments — some even without captions…” into a successful Broadway musical.

That Old Black Magic, So Hard to Recapture

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 5, 2010, NY Times

CHICAGO — Among the dozens of cartoons that Charles Addams drew of his devilishly subversive Addams family is one in which Gomez and Morticia; their daughter, Wednesday; son, Pugsley; and manservant, Lurch, are admiring the view from their new picture window. The view is of a cemetery crowded with tombstones.

A cemetery is also the setting of the first scene of the new “Addams Family” musical, now finishing a tryout here before its scheduled arrival on Broadway in March. In that opening number, “Clandango,” the family dances and sings about loyalty to the Addams way of life; a chorus rollicks around the stage carrying gravestones; and Morticia and Wednesday team up for a mother-daughter tap dance atop a coffin.

What works brilliantly in morbidly hilarious cartoons, however, is a tougher trick to translate to live theater, as the producers of “The Addams Family” have learned.While the musical has drawn huge audiences here, it has received mixed reviews from critics and raised enough concerns for the producers that last week they took the unusual step of hiring the Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks to take over and work with the creative team to make 11th-hour fixes to the production, which stars Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia.

Unlike most musical adaptations for Broadway, which come from movies or books, the producers of “The Addams Family” musical chose to base their show on Addams’s cartoons, mainly published in The New Yorker magazine in the 1940s and ’50s. Preferring to eschew the slapstick humor of the popular “Addams Family” television show of the 1960s and three movies in the ’90s, the producers have said their goal was to create a musical that reflected the mordant wit of the cartoons, like the famous one of Gomez, Morticia and Lurch preparing to pour a cauldron of boiling oil on a group of Christmas carolers.

The Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, which holds the copyrights to all of Addams’s works, granted the rights for a Broadway musical to one of the show’s lead producers, Stuart Oken, because he shared the foundation’s desire “to ignore all previous interpretations of the characters known as the Addams family and to create a new story based solely upon the cartoons by Charles Addams,” H. Kevin Miserocchi, the executive director of the foundation and one of its two trustees, said in an e-mail message.

The challenge is undoubtedly steep, given Addams’s ingenuity.

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre Hits The Century Mark

Today, January 10, 2010, The Addams Family Musical will play its final show in Chicago.  And while the Chicago theater community laments that fact, the Broadway community celebrates.  More specifically, the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre celebrates.  And what a celebration it is.  For not only is it a celebration of the anticipated arrival of Addams Family, but a celebration of a century of Broadway Theater.

Lunt-Fontanne current marquee, photo by Matthew Blank

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre Turns 100
by Robert  Viaga, playbill.com

Happy 100th birthday Jan. 10 to a grand old lady of Broadway, the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

According to Louis Botto’s “At This Theatre,” “This beautiful theatre opened on January 10, 1910, as the Globe, named after Shakespeare’s theatre in England. It was built by the illustrious producer Charles B. Dillingham and originally had its entrance on Broadway between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets. Dillingham, who spared no expense on his projects, hired the famed architects Carrère and Hastings to design his theatre. According to a report in the New York Dramatic Mirror on January 22, 1910, the new theatre had a large stage, a compact auditorium, Italian Renaissance decor with draperies of Rose du Barry and walls of old gold, blue, and ivory white. One feature of the theatre that attracted much attention was a large oval panel in the ceiling that could be opened when the weather permitted. The Mirror called this ‘a complete novelty in American theatrical design.’”

The inaugural production was the musical The Old Town, starring Dave Montgomery and Fred Stone (who had played the Tin Man and the Scarecrow in the original 1903 The Wizard of Oz).

Among the great stars and shows that followed: Montgomery and Stone in Chin-Chin (1914), George White’s Scandals (1920 and 1921) with a score by George Gershwin that introduced “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise,” the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921 with Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields, No, No, Nanette (1925) and Jerome Kern’s The Cat and the Fiddle (1931).

The Globe spent the years 1932 to 1957 as a cinema, but it was refurbished as a legitimate house and reopened May 5, 1958 as the Lunt-Fontanne, named after the acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The ceiling opening was sealed and the entrance relocated to 46th Street. Lunt and Fontanne rechristened the stage with the original Broadway production of Friedrich Duerrenmatt’s The Visit.

Among hits that played at the theatre after its renaming: the original The Sound of Music with Mary Martin (1959), Sid Caesar in Little Me (1962), the Duke Ellington musical revue, Sophisticated Ladies(1981), Maury Yeston and Peter Stone’s Titanic (1997) and the theatre’s record-holder, Beauty and the Beast, which moved from the Palace in 1999 and ran here for eight years. Disney’s Little Mermaid played more than a year, and the Lunt-Fontanne is currently being prepared for its next big musical, The Addams Family with Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia.

Addams Family In Its Final Days In Chicago

Only a few days left to see The Addams Family Musical in Chicago!  The Broadway-bound show, starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, will blow OUT of the windy city on January 10th.  Visit the show’s official website for ticket information.

Broadway previews begin on Monday, March 8th at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, with opening night scheduled for Thursday, April 8th.  Tickets are on sale now.

Rachel de Benedet Takes The Stage as Morticia

Rachel de Benedet, understudy for Morticia

Some Broadway shows go an entire run without ever having to make use of the understudies. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for the Addams Family Musical in Chicago.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Nathan Lane took ill and was replaced (superbly, I hear) by his understudy Merwin Foard (Nathan Lane Out Sick Thanksgiving Weekend). On the weekend of the new year, Bebe Neuwirth apparently suffered from tendonitis, giving her understudy, Rachel de Benedet, the chance to show off her Morticia.  And show off she did … a few comments I’ve seen floating around …

…”Rachel de Benedet was a terrific Morticia.  (She) and Nathan Lane had really good chemistry, for her being an understudy…”

 …”(de Benedet) was absolutely stunning as Morticia and her voice was clear and gorgeous…”

…”I can’t believe Bebe Neuwirth was sick.  The understudy was great though.”

Ms. de Benedet is no stranger to Chicago.  In September of ‘08 she could be seen performing with Rachel York and Jeff Daniels in the Goodman Theatre’s world premiere musical Turn of the Century, which was directed by Tommy Tune, with the book penned by none other than Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.

Most recently, Rachel co-starred with Norbert Leo Butz, Aaron Tveit, Tom Wopat, Kerry Butler and many more in the world premiere of Catch Me If You Can in Seattle last summer.  It will be interesting to see what happens when/if that show comes to Broadway in the Fall.

Congratulations to Rachel on her most successful “fill-in”.  And we wish Ms. Neuwirth a very speedy recovery!

Happy Birthday to Bebe Neuwirth

The Addams Family blog would like to wish Bebe Neuwirth a Happy New Year AND a very Happy Birthday! What a great birth date – people throw great parties for you every year!

The Addams Family Musical Review “Recap”

Broadway In Chicago’s pre-Broadway world premiere presentation of The Addams Family, a new musical based on the bizarre family of characters created by legendary cartoonist Charles Addams, opened Wednesday, December 9 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts’ Oriental Theater. The production continues in Chicago through January 10, and will play Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre beginning March 4, with an anticipated opening date of April 8.

The musical stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia Adams, with Kevin Chamberlin (Uncle Fester), Jackie Hoffman (Grandmama), Zachary James (Lurch), Adam Riegler (Pugsley), and Krysta Rodriguez (Wednesday) rounding out the “Family”.  Playing the “family who comes to dinner” are  Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello as Mal and Alice Beineke, and Wesley Taylor as Lucas Beineke, Wednesday’s love interest. 

The production features direction and design by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
 

Wednesday night’s performance was attended by many critics whose reactions are mixed, but the consensus is decidedly positive.  Excerpts of some of those reviews follow:

By Hedy Weiss, Theater Critic, The Chicago Sun Times

“…there is rarely a dull moment as each grand shock of the new, each adjustment to change, each recognition of aging and each surprising rebirth wraps its arms itself around the characters of “The Addams Family.”

By Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Scenes From “The Addams Family” Musical

Share Your Experience

If you’ve seen The Addams Family Musical, please share your experience with others!  Just post a comment to this article, and others can join in the  ”conversation”.  If you have pictures you would like to share, just e-mail them to afblog@comcast.net, and I will post them here.

Bebe Neuwirth Brings To Life The Macabre Morticia

Surely the decision took all of two seconds: Whom to cast as Morticia in the new musical The Addams Family? Who else but pale, raven-haired, two-time Tony Award–winner Bebe Neuwirth? The musical-theater vet stars opposite Nathan Lane in the musical based on the Charles Addams cartoons, which, after premiering in Chicago, will make its Broadway debut in March. Neuwirth recently called before a day of tech rehearsal.

Time Out Chicago: I was at a drag show last night, and the very first performer was Morticia Addams. You must realize your Morticia will inspire drag queens for years to come.
Bebe Neuwirth: [Laughs] Morticia is archetypal, so I’m not at all surprised somebody’s doing her. She’s—somebody said something about being goth, but I thought, Well, she’s goth before there was goth. People expect me to wear black nail polish, but that’s more what goth has become. That’s a little bit too obvious.

TOC: Well, I’m sure you’ll at least be a much more attractive Morticia than this guy was.
BN: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen some very beautiful drag queens.

TOC: It did raise a larger question: What’s it like to create a character who’s already so deeply etched in the popular imagination?
If you’re gonna play an archetype, you have to make her specific for you: What specific qualities are there for you to play?

TOC: So how do you answer that question here?
BN: Well, that’s a question I would prefer not to answer. [Laughs]

TOC: Why’s that?
BN: Because when you’re working on a character, there are aspects that, for me as an actress, I prefer not to talk about with anyone because it dissipates the energy and the focus…. I actually haven’t told my husband anything about the show because—

TOC: Your own husband?
BN: Yeah. That’s really hard.