All Entries in the "Creative Team" Category

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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Michael Riedel Can’t Get Enough of “The Addams Family”

It’s only been a month since New York Post gossip columnist Michael Riedel drew the ire of The Addams Family’s Nathan Lane and Rick Elice (see Lane and Elice react to Riedel’s Comments), but he’s at it again.  In his latest article, Fast Lane to a better play, Riedel admits to being one of the vultures circling overhead the musical.  And once again he relies on ”sources close to the show” to provide accusations such as “ Broadway’s top musical star (Lane) is, I’m told, pretty much calling the shots on this $15 million musical…”

While drawing attention to Riedel feels like reacting to a child throwing a temper tantrum, I just can’t help it.  It’s so darned entertaining.

Click here to read the NY Post article.

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.

Brickman and Elice’s Jersey Boys Chicago Run Comes To An End

Sunday was a sad day for the Chicago theater community, not to mention to Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman.  Not only did they say goodbye to The Addams Family Musical, which finished up its eight week pre-Broadway try-out, but they also bid farewell to the Chicago run of Jersey Boys at the Bank of America Theatre.  At its closing, the show had played 27 months – a total of 951 performances – and been seen by 1.3 million patrons.

Chris Jones, of the Chicago Tribune, Theater Loop Blog had this to say about the Jersey Boys closing: “…while all closings are emotional, there’s no question that Jersey Boys, which has been kept in top form and looked as good Sunday as on its opening night, exceeded all reasonable expectations in Chicago and proved that shows other than Wicked could sit down here and thrive.

Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, the authors of (conveniently) both Jersey Boys and The Addams Family, took the stage at the Jersey Boyscurtain call, with Elice noting that ‘what we thought was going to be a 10-week stint’ had, in fact, turned into a run seen by 1.3 million people.  ‘This has to be the most spectacular opening night I have ever experienced,’ Brickman joked, clearly moved by the emotion of the occasion.”

Congratulations to Rick and Marshall on the successful run of Jersey Boys in Chicago.  May all their endeavors be so blessed!

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!

Tony Award Winner Jerry Zaks Joins Addams Family Creative Team

Stuart Oken (producer) said that feedback he has received “is that perhaps we were taking a little too much for granted assuming that the audience walks in with the relationship with the Addams family fully intact, and we didn’t appropriately reconnect the audience to the family members.”

The original creative team will remain in tact, with Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch still listed as the directors and production designers, but Mr. Zaks will apparently be “running the show”.

According to the Times article, Mr. Zaks is close to Mr. (Nathan) Lane, having directed him in the long-running Broadway musical revivals of “Guys and Dolls” in 1992 and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in 1996, for which Mr. Lane won the Tony Award for best actor in a musical. Mr. Oken and Mr. Furman said Mr. Lane neither demanded nor requested that Mr. Zaks or any other show doctor be hired.

Kudos to the Addams Family team for not being too vain to admit that they needed a little help, and going out and getting it.  After all, that’s what a try-out is all about - if you find that some things don’t work, you fix them.

To read the entire Times article, click here.

Lane and Elice react to Riedel’s Comments

In a recent New York Post article entitled “‘Addams Family’ Vacation,” columnist Michael Riedel … accused Nathan Lane of gossiping about the show at the Four Seasons Spa … made sarcastic comments about the creative team’s holiday travel plans … and referred to the show as “troubled.” Now, I’ve never been a fan of Riedel’s style of “journalism” (using gossip gathered by his so-called “spies” for his “reporting”), but this was particularly irritating to me, especially since he hasn’t even seen the show himself.

Imagine my delight when I saw this article posted the very next day – “Lane’s World – excellent!” – in which Riedel shares Lane’s and Rick Elice’s reactions to his article.

In a letter to Riedel, Lane writes:

Dear Michael,

Just for the record, I am not a fixture at the Four Seasons spa, nor would I discuss the show in public in the manner you described . . .

Everyone on the creative team is working very hard to bring the best possible show into New York. I don’t have to tell you, but I’m going to anyway: Birthing a new musical is no day at the beach. As Larry Gelbart said, “If Hitler’s alive, I hope he’s out of town with a new musical.”

After your column today, I feel [Hitler] might be working for the New York Post.

‘Tis the season of giving, so give us a break! …

The article goes on to share Rick Elice’s reaction to the article:

… “We are not casually lounging in the tropics, nor even visiting tanning salons on the Upper West Side…We’re at work every day, amidst the snow and the shoppers, which is precisely where we want to be. It’s not easy work, but it’s a glorious challenge [and] I wouldn’t trade anything for it. Certainly not the beach, a tan or a mai-tai. Yes, it means we must share your pasty complexion, but we wear ours as a badge of honor.

Hope your holidays are filled with the leisure time about which you seem to enjoy writing. As for me, back to work.’”

I am SO glad to see Rick and Nathan taking up for themselves and the show, and tactfully letting Riedel know that they don’t appreciate being the butt of his “jokes.” Seeing that article yesterday made it a merry Christmas, indeed.

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

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.

…Sergio Trujillo gives new meaning to multitasking

I found this fantastic article on newcitystage.com and had to share. I knew after seeing Jersey Boys that Sergio Trujillo was special, but I didn’t realize just how amazing he really is.

Broadway Boundless: “Addams Family” choreographer Sergio
Trujillo gives new meaning to multitasking

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

Sergio Trujillo has a talent for continuing a conversation exactly at the point where he left off, something that serves the choreographer well during an extended interview at the Argo Tea near the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre. It’s where his latest project, the highly anticipated musical version of “The Addams Family,” is in previews for a December 9 world premiere.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and he’s in the middle of relating how Debbie Allen (of “Fame” fame) became his sponsor for his Green Card in the early nineties—Trujillo is Canadian by nationality and Colombian by birth—when he leaves briefly to retrieve a tomato-goat-cheese quiche and nonfat latte. He is describing his collaboration with “Addams Family’”s innovative co-directors/designers Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (“amazing but a new way of working for me”) when he answers his iPhone to clarify a note to an assistant. There is the time Trujillo has to excuse himself for twenty minutes in order to run back to the Oriental to give notes to the cast. Later, at the brand-new Puma flagship store across from the theater (“I’ve been dying to check this place out,” he says), he begins telling me how he had been mugged two weeks earlier on State Street following a late-night production meeting, then stops to admire a pair of black Pumas.  “I love these,” he says.

Happy Birthday to Rick Elice

The Addams Family Blog would like to extend Happy Birthday wishes to Addams Family writer Rick Elice.  And if buzz from the first few performances of show are anything to go by, I think it safe to assume that it  will indeed be a VERY HAPPY DAY!

We wish you the best, Rick, because you are the best.

Please, Don’t “Review” the “Preview”

Previews began on Friday, November 13 for the new Addams Family musical at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in Chicago. And if we refer back to Rick Elice’s statement from our article ”Rick Elice Chats With AFB About “The Addams Family” Musical“, we can assume that he, Marshall (Brickman) and Andrew (Lippa) “listen(ed) very, very carefully (to the audiences)” and will sit down today, November 16,  and “figure out what (we) need to do, in terms of the writing of the show, …”  After all, this IS a try-out, and every performance is a learning experience. 

Theater etiquette requires that we not review a preview, and with good reason.  But I don’t think there is any harm in sharing some of the comments I’ve seen floating around the internet…

Just saw it today and it was awesome! The entire cast was amazing!!!! Nathan – you are the ultimate entertainer! You are just wonderful! And Bebe you are beautiful! And everyone in the cast was superb! I will definitely see this again hopefully very soon!

Saw the afternoon matinee…What a HOOT!!…loved Uncle Fester’s song “The Moon and Me”…Great fencing & tango by Bebe & Nathan!

 Bebe Neuwirth signing autograph for my mom. She was so sweet.

Kudo’s to the casting director – what a terrific ensemble!

…the special effects … were just amazing…

The score was amazing, not what I expected and I think the set design was so clever and very well used.

Andrew Lippa has provided some quite traditional Broadway-style songs that hearken to a much earlier era.  They are tuneful and easy to take in.

Well, from the sound of these comments, I think we can assume that Rick, Marshall and Andrew’s meeting will be full of positive energy! 

If you have seen the show, or plan to see it soon, we would love to hear YOUR comments!

Sneak-Peek Video of Vanity Fair Shoot

Great behind-the-scenes footage from the recent photo shoot of The Addams Family portrait for Vanity Fair’s December issue.

Rick Elice Chats With AFB About “The Addams Family” Musical

Rick Elice, famed co-author of Jersey Boys, has a new project to get excited about – The Addams Family Musical, set to begin previews in Chicago on November 13.  I had the privilege of chatting with Rick recently about his Addams Family experience.

Addams Family Blog: Rick, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to talk with me about The Addams Family musical.  Previews start ….Friday the 13th …that’s very convenient that the date fell on Friday the 13th…

Rick Elice: Well, originally there was some idea of starting it on Halloween, and I guess that the schedule just didn’t work out, so Friday the 13th became the next obvious day – the next luckiest day for us to begin.

AFB: And I bet it will be lucky for you. How are rehearsals going?

RE: Really great. We have an amazing cast – we just have the most wonderful cast of people that’s ever been, I think.  It’s such a gream droup…..a gream droup I just said … a dream group.  (See, everything’s inverted with the Addams Family.)  It’s a pleasure to be in the same room with them.  And the audience is in for a real treat.

AFB: Do you expect to have to make a lot of changes during the Chicago “try-out?”

RE: Sure.  Well, because you just said it, didn’t you, it’s a try-out.  This is a brand new show, it’s not based on anything.  It’s never been performed before.  Soon we’re going to have an audience for the very first time ever.  The last  big piece of the puzzle is always when the audience arrives.  And so we’re going to listen very, very carefully.  And then we’re going to come back the next night, and we’re going to listen very carefully again.  And we’re going to come back the next night and listen very carefully again. And after the first weekend, Marshall and Andrew and I will sit down on November 16th, and we will figure out what we need to do, in terms of the writing of the show, and then we’ll sit down with the Directors and the Designers and figure out how we can effect that.  The audience will tell you things you would never, ever learn without them.  I can’t wait.

AFB:  Yes, and I imagine that each audience will be different throughout that weekend…..

RE: Every night, it’s brand new, and every night is learning.  Neil Simon once said something very, very smart [about this] which is, “You get to take the test every single night, and watching the performance is doing your homework, and then the next day you go in, and you try to get a better grade.”  And that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing.  We’re shooting for an A++ on this show because why would you ever shoot for less?  We’re trying to make something really, really special here which is a musical comedy – a musical comedy with heart. And there’s probably nothing harder to do.  Except solving healthcare.

AFB: There’s been so much media attention already…

RE: Has there been?  I’m not particularly aware of it.  I haven’t been paying much attention to anything other than rehearsals.  Has there been a lot of stuff?

AFB: Well, it seems that I’ve been reading about it for so long, and there are such high expectations.  And with it all set to open on Broadway already, and selling tickets already.…..does that add pressure to the creative team, with all the hype, or is it maybe a relief, that it’s all set – where you’re going to go?

RE: Of course, it’s a big responsibility when people start putting their money down on the barrel head.  But it’s also thrilling to know that people actually have a desire to see something.  And it does help to take the pressure off because, you know, with Jersey Boys we weren’t exactly in the same situation.  It was very, very hard to get people interested before the show came to town because nobody really believed it would be anything more than a (gulp) jukebox musical…….

AFB:  And now people can’t even get tickets!

RE: Yeah!  But before we came to Broadway, people really had kind of a wait-and-see attitude, which I understand.  I would have had it too.  But with Addams Family, I guess on the strength of the cast, there are people who are willing to take a risk in advance.  And I’m humbled by the responsibility of knowing people are buying tickets in advance because those are the people who are really taking the flyer with you, and those are the people I really want to satisfy.

AFB:  How did you and Marshall [Brickman] get linked with this project?

RE:  Well, as it turns out, the gentleman who got the rights to do it, Stuart Oken, the Producer, was a colleague of mine from Disney.  And Julian Crouch, one of the Directors, had talked about a project with Marshall.  So when Stuart got the rights to it and went to Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch and said, “I’d like you to direct this,” they said, “Okay.”  And Stuart said, “We need to think about who will write the show.”  And Julian said, “There’s only one writer I know in America, and that’s Marshall Brickman.”  And Stuart said, “Well, that’s funny because his writing partner is a friend of mine named Rick Elice.  So why don’t we go to them?”  So that’s how we were first approached.  And of course, the minute Stuart said, “The Addams Family,” we said “Yes!”  It did not take more than 30 seconds to convince us to do it.  And then the next person to join the team was Andrew Lippa, the Composer/Lyricist, who is very, very talented. This is going to be big for Andrew.  He’s written a terrific score.

AFB:  There is certainly a lot of talent in that creative team.

So you were pretty familiar with the Addams family, but did you have to do a lot of research?

RE: Well, I remembered the TV show from when I was a kid.  But I hadn’t seen it in 40 years, I suppose.  I had actually never seen the films, but Stuart didn’t want it to be based on anything that had been done previously.  All he gave us to look at were the original Charles Addams cartoons from the New Yorker.  And those cartoons refreshed our memories and raised the sorts of questions about the story and character that writers try to answer.  Of course, they’re not three dimensional in a cartoon.  They’re just two dimensional.  You have a single frame on a page in a magazine, and it’s designed to show you a visual and give you a caption that will give you a chuckle.  And that’s all it’s designed to do.  There’s nothing that comes before, there’s nothing that comes after.

So you can see a cartoon, for example, where the mother says to the little daughter, with the little boy in the background holding a jar with a skull and crossbones on it, “Well, don’t come whining to me.  You go poison him right back.”  And it’s funny, and you chuckle as you just did, and you think, “Well, what does that mean?  Does that mean that the mother is encouraging one kid to kill the other one?  Does that mean she doesn’t love her kids?  Does that mean she does love her kids but they can’t die?  Can they die?  Are they human?  Are they aliens?…”  And you’re asking all these logic questions…(laughter from AFB)… and your head begins to implode like an old grapefruit…..And you think, “Uh-oh, this is gonna be harder than we thought…”

We had to take the characteristics from the cartoons and kind of breathe a third dimension into them, humanize them, if you will, invent a story and situation, and deliver something that the audience will find very funny, and also, hopefully very, very touching. And that was the modest assignment we gave ourselves.

AFB:  How long did that take?  It sounds like it must have been a long process…

RE: At least three or four hours… but maybe that long only because we stopped for lunch in the middle.

AFB:  (laughing)  Well, I know you’re good, but no one can be THAT good…

RE: I can’t really remember because I blocked it out.  I remember being much, much younger when I started.  At home I’ve learned to turn all the mirrors to the wall, and I walked into our digs in Chicago, and there was a mirror, and I thought, “Who is that strange bald man?”  And realized that it was me!  And I thought, “I guess we’ve been working on this show for a long time.”

AFB: (laughing, again) Maybe it’s a good thing that you didn’t have preconceptions from the movies because a lot of people will have the TV show in mind, or have the movie in mind. They may come to the show thinking that Gomez should act like Raul Julia, or …

RE: Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe he should act like Raul Julia, maybe he should act like Nathan Lane.  I think the character is going to act like whomever you cast.  We went in the direction of Nathan because Nathan agreed to read the script for us at a very early stage.  And he was so spectacularly brilliant that we had to write it for him, and so we wrote it with his voice in mind.  And so it really is sort of based on him.  But that was a decision we made, not because we decided that Gomez should be funny but because Nathan suddenly seemed to bring a whole pallet of colors to playing this role that  people have never seen him do.  In addition to being screamingly funny. And I think he sensed that too – that this was a real opportunity for him – that this was something that he should do.

What we did was create our own situation and tried to play it out…“What would happen if…?” And we came up with an archetypical situation that we thought a lot of people could identify with.  Because I think identifying with the characters is really important, especially when they’re strange.  And over the course of the evening I think people will come to realize that the Addams family is really just sort of like any other family living on the upper west side of Manhattan.  Maybe just somewhat more peculiar.  But really pretty much like everyone else.

AFB:  Well, you’ve already answered my last three questions…

RE: With my blabbering on and on and on??

AFB:  Certainly not blabbering!  But apparently we were on the same wavelength.  I do want to ask, though, if you have a favorite character?  Was there one that was particularly fun for you to write for?

RE: (hesitantly)  Well… that’s like asking me who my favorite child is.  That’s a tough question because even if I had an answer, I could never tell you what it was because that would be wildly indiscreet.  But I must say that I’ve fallen in love with this family. I find it to be, even when the show is at it’s silliest, I find it to be very, very touching.   Because what our little story is about, what the theme (and I don’t mean the plot), but what the theme of our story is about is very moving to me – very moving.  Because it’s a theme of acceptance.  And accepting not just the people around you for all of their quirks, but accepting that a little mystery in life is a very, very good thing.  And that’s what I really loved writing about.  I loved writing about the idea that I – who have lived all my life trying to shed light on every situation so that I would always know what was waiting for me around every corner – in order to rule out life’s many unpleasant surprises, also sometimes would rule out life’s pleasant surprises. And that if you, shall we say, embrace the darkness of what lies ahead, you can actually enjoy your life a lot more.  So to me, my life has actually changed by having written this show.  I’ve learned a big life lesson by writing about it that I never would have been able to have absorbed simply by being told about it by a well-meaning friend or (chuckle) psychoanalyst.

AFB:  And you get paid for it – you didn’t have to pay an analyst.

RE: Well, in theory – in theory we’ll get paid for it, too.  That depends on what the audience thinks of it.

AFB:  Well, it sounds like the audience is going to love it.  I’m so excited about the show, and I can’t wait to see it.  It sounds like it’s going to be wonderful, and definitely live up to the expectations that people have for it.

RE: From your mouth, Catherine.  From your mouth…

AFB:  Rick, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you.  Thank you again for taking the time to chat about The Addams Family.