All Entries in the "Miscellaneous "Stuff"" Category
Drama Desk Coverage by Jimmy Merrill
Our special correspondent, Broadway journalist Jimmy Merrill, covers the 2010 Drama Desk Awards for NBC. Some great interviews! Look for Anne Hathaway, Viola Davis and Liev Schreiber. (Courtesy, NBC)
Jonas Brothers Visit The Addams Family
Nick and Kevin Jonas, along with little brother Frankie, visited another famous family this week – The Addams Family!
For more pics, visit broadway.com.
Drama Desk 8, Tony 2
With the two measly Tony nominations for Addams Family, the eight Drama Desk nominations look just fine to the producers, I’m sure. I have them listed below.
It’s curious to me how two such well-established awards could have such drastically different outcomes. La Cage Aux Folles led the musicals in Tony noms (11) but actually had one fewer Drama Desk nom than Addams Family.
Anyone care to comment?
Drama Desk Nominations for The Addams Family
Outstanding Musical
Outstanding Actor in a Musical: Nathan Lane
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical: Kevin Chamberlin
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical: Carolee Carmello,
Outstanding Music: Andrew Lippa
Outstanding Lyrics: Andrew Lippa
Outstanding Lighting Design: Natasha Katz
Outstanding Set Design: Phelim McDermott, Julian Crouch & Basil Twist
Note: Drama Desk made an executive decision to include Basil Twist’s puppetry under Set Design.
Tour Announced! New Orleans, First Stop
The Addams Family musical continues its critic-proof ways by announcing that its national tour will begin September 2011 at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts in New Orleans.
That’s right — they’ve announced the national tour just three weeks after opening at the Lunt-Fontanne on Broadway to what would have been devastating reviews for mere mortals.
By the way, my family is serving me a big helping of crow tonight because I fearlessly predicted the tour would start with one of the venues of producing partner Five Cent Productions. Nope.
As for Tour Stop #1, the theater is located in Louis Armstrong Park, near the French Quarter. It was officially christened the New Orleans Theater of the Performing Arts in 1973.
In 1993, the New Orleans City Council renamed it the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts to honor the legendary New Orleans gospel singer. The theater was all but destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but has been rebuilt at a cost of $27 million. It seats 2,100.
The Addams Family in tour will be the first Broadway musical to enjoy incentive programs offered by Louisiana Entertainment, the entertainment industry development office for the state.
Speculating on an Addams Family National Tour
Patrick Healy’s recent NY Times article (see “The Addams Family” A Critic-Proof Smash) got me thinking about an Addams Family national tour. If and when the show goes on the road, what might be the first stop? I haven’t found any substantiating evidence on the subject, but if I was to speculate, I would start with FIVE CENT PRODUCTIONS.
Five Cent Productions, which shares an Addams Family Producer credit, is a managing member of Elephant Eye Theatrical. Its members are nationally renowned performing arts centers that are proactively developing new theatrical material for their own theaters and stages worldwide. Here’s a quick look at each of the Five Cent members:
♦♦ Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts of Hartford, CT, whose President and CEO, David Fay, is Five Cent’s managing member.
“Connecticut’s Premier Performing Arts Center”
The Bushnell’s upcoming shows include Porgy and Bess, South Pacific and Steve Solomon’s My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m STILL in Therapy. For more information, visit Bushnell’s website.
♦♦ The Citi Performing Arts Center of Boston, MA
“…one of the nation’s foremost nonprofit performing arts institutions”
Between their two theatres, the Wang Theatre and the Shubert Theatre, Citi’s upcoming shows are a mix of comedy (George Lopez and Conan) and music (Diana Ross and Celtic Thunder), with Jesus Christ Superstar and Dora the Explorer thrown in the mix. Click here to visit Citi’s website.
♦♦ The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts of St. Paul, MN
“crown jewel of Saint Paul”
The Ordway’s 2010-2011 season boasts such theatrical offerings as Evita, Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Stomp, Next to Normal, Guys and Dolls, and 9 to 5 the Musical. Click here for more information.
♦♦ The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts of Philadelphia, PA
“Premier performing arts groups reside in The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and the Academy of Music, forming an exciting community of artists, and an oasis for art lovers”
The Kimmel Center has an impressive 2010-2011 Broadway series on tap, which includes Jersey Boys, Les Miserables, In The Heights, Mary Poppins, South Pacific and Next to Normal. Visit their website for more information.
♦♦ Pittsburgh CLO
“Exceptional Musical Theater for More Than Half a Century”
Current and upcoming productions (between now and September) include Nunsense, Oliver, Miss Saigon, Curtains, The Producers, and Hairspray. Check out their website for more information.
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♦♦ Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
“The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and development of Pittsburgh’s downtown Cultural District.”
Click here for more information on the venues of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
So, all of you in the areas of Hartford, Boston, St. Paul, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, keep your eyes and ears open. And let us hear from you!
The Addams Family Heads to the Recording Studio
The cast of Broadway’s The Addams Family (which stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia, and includes Terrence Mann as Mal Beineke, Carolee Carmello as Alice Beineke, Kevin Chamberlin as Uncle Fester, Jackie Hoffman as Grandmama, Zachary James as Lurch, Adam Riegler as Pugsley, Wesley Taylor as Lucas Beineke and Krysta Rodriguez as Wednesday) will head to a Manhattan sound studio on April 19 to record the cast album of the new musical, with an expected release date of June 8.
According to Composer/Lyricist Andrew Lippa, the cast recording will include bonus tracks (yet to be revealed) that will be available digitally.
The opening night Playbill reveals the following list of musical numbers for The Addams Family:
ACT ONE
Overture
“When You’re an Addams”
“Pulled”
“Where Did We Go Wrong?”
“One Normal Night”
“Morticia”
“What If”
Full Disclosure”
“Waiting”
“Full Disclosure” – Part 2
ACT TWO
Entr’acte
“Just Around the Corner”
“The Moon and Me”
“Happy/Sad”
“Crazier Than You”
“Let’s Not Talk About Anything Else But Love”
“In the Arms”
“Live Before We Die”
“Tango de Amor”
“Move Toward the Darkness”
“The Addams Family” A Critic-Proof Smash
This is a pretty long article, but it’s so good that I have to post it in it’s entirety. I found these excerpts to be of particular interest to fans of the show:
“…the musical has grossed $6.5 million in five weeks… and the producers are already planning a multicity national tour.”
“…(the) President of Group Sales Box Office, a major Broadway ticket seller, said …that “The Addams Family” remained the biggest ticket advance of any Broadway show that his company has sold this year.”
A scene from “The Addams Family,” featuring Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane, which opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater.
Critics May Rant, but ‘Addams Family’ Rakes It In
By PATRICK HEALY, NY Times
Published: April 13, 2010
The new Broadway musical “The Addams Family” opened Thursday to the sort of scathing reviews that would bury most shows in the graveyard next to the Addamses’ forbidding mansion.
The result: The show sold $851,000 in tickets last weekend on top of a $15 million sales advance, huge figures for a new Broadway run, and all but guaranteeing that it will be hard to snag a pair of good orchestra seats until fall. After five months of well-publicized creative difficulties for the show, this seeming paradox amounts to a theater world version of the golden fleece: the critic-proof smash.
Hollywood, pop music studios and book publishers long ago mastered the art of assembling commercially successful products that critics hate. Theater is different: Only a fraction of shows turn a profit to begin with (about 30 percent on Broadway each year), and expensive tickets, fixed performance schedules and a finite potential audience for most live theater increase the importance of reviews.
Yet “The Addams Family” seems to have cracked a formula that to various degrees made long-running hits of “Jekyll & Hyde,” “Beauty and the Beast,” ”Mamma Mia!” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” after being dismissed by many critics. Such shows have tended to attract audiences already fond of their songs or characters.
That formula for “The Addams Family” includes a beloved brand-name title, a famous star, an inoffensive script, echoes of nostalgia and some savvy commercial judgments. The producers chose a theater with an unusually large number of orchestra seats, many of which they can sell at premium prices that top out at $300 apiece. And, in an unusual move for Broadway, they recruited five regional theaters as producing partners, spreading the financial risk while also having access to their subscribers and to those theaters for a national tour.
Kevin Chamberlin as Uncle Fester and Jackie Hoffman as Grandma performing onstage in “The Addams Family.”
While the creators promised to base the musical on Charles Addams’s mordantly sophisticated cartoons in The New Yorker, they ended up adding the theme song of the “Addams Family” television show for the audience to snap-snap along with before the curtain even goes up. In hopes of improving the show between a Chicago tryout and its Broadway run, they also added broad, sometimes goofy touches like a toupee-wearing Uncle Fester and a Grandma dressed like a Red Cross nurse — images that make some people laugh, but belie the darker spirit of the Addams cartoons for others.
The producers also built a marketing campaign that would cover all the bases, using images that would remind people of the cartoons, the television show, and the “Addams Family” movies. And the casting of Nathan Lane to play the paterfamilias Gomez, through at least next March, has been especially important to the musical’s fortunes, according to several theater producers not affiliated with the show, given that he is a popular actor with both theater- and film-goers.
“If Nathan Lane is in anything you already have my money in the till, and I imagine that there are thousands of others who feel the same,” said Michael Ritchie, artistic director of the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, which is not associated with “The Addams Family.”
Whether the musical — which cost $16.5 million to mount on Broadway — can flourish without a well-known star like Mr. Lane is among the factors that will determine whether the show endures as critic-proof. Based on 26 major reviews for “The Addams Family,” including one in The New York Times, the theater Web site Stagegrade.com gave the show a median grade of D+. For now, however, the musical has grossed $6.5 million in five weeks — more than current hit musicals like “A Little Night Music,” “Billy Elliot,” “West Side Story” and “Wicked” did in their early weeks — and the producers are already planning a multicity national tour.
“We sought to create a musical that was not only very funny, but also surprised the audience by proving to be touching as well,” Roy Furman, one of the lead producers of the show, said in an interview by e-mail. “We are delighted that audiences have responded so strongly, as evidenced by nightly ovations, and word of mouth, which has sparked advance sales.”
Four years in the making, “The Addams Family” had a pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago last winter, drawing huge crowds but mixed reviews from critics there. Those reviews prompted Mr. Furman and the other lead producer, Stuart Oken, to hire the veteran Broadway director Jerry Zaks to take over the show from its two directors, the Broadway newcomers Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, and ostensibly fix “The Addams Family” before opening in New York.
Playbill.com’s Cue & A with Krysta Rodriguez
PLAYBILL.COM’S CUE & A: Krysta Rodriguez
By Ernio Hernandez
13 Apr 2010
Krysta Rodriguez — currently appearing in the new Broadway musical The Addams Family — fills out Playbill.com’s questionnaire with random facts, backstage trivia and pop culture tidbits.
Full given name: Krysta Anne Rodriguez
Hometown: Orange, CA
Zodiac sign: Leo
Audition song: “Hallelujah” (Leonard Cohen, not the “Hallelujah Chorus.” People get confused.)
First Broadway show ever saw: Fiddler on the Roof, 1990
If you could go back in time and catch any Broadway show, what would it be? Original Production of Sweeney Todd
Current show you have been recommending to friends: Next Fall! Go see it!
Favorite show tune: The entire score of Children of Eden, “Losing My Mind” from Follies, “Pulled” from The Addams Family (no joke).
MAC or PC? I was a firm PC person my entire life, but when the last one crashed, I finally broke down and got the MAC. I’m a full convert.
Last book you read: “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. It’s only in hardcover, and it’s 464 pages but it’s totally worth it.
Must-see TV show: “The Office” (American version). I know this is going to cause controversy, but Steve Carell is so brilliant that I will stand behind it no matter what.
Favorite board game: Ask anyone who knows me, I’m a MAJOR gamer. Catchphrase, Running Charades, Celebrity, Cranium, all of these are golden.
Pop culture guilty pleasure: Reality TV. I think you can learn a lot about acting from watching real people in extreme situations. Human behavior is so fascinating when challenged.
First stage kiss: I was playing Marian in The Music Man in high school, and I had to kiss Harold Hill. It was my first stage kiss and his first kiss ever! We had to choreograph it very specifically so that it didn’t look too awkward.
Favorite post-show meal: Spicy Chili Chicken Cup o’ Noodles. So classy.
How you got your Equity card: Playing Helen in Bye Bye Birdie at Encores! One of the most fun experiences and my first New York gig!
Worst onstage mishap: During our out-of-town Chicago tryout, Wes Taylor (who plays my boyfriend Lucas in The Addams Family) and I were finishing our duet, “Crazier Than You.” Near the end of the song, he’s supposed to run to me and we finish the song and kiss. Before he can start to move to me, the scrim starts coming down in between us! Just as I resign myself to the fact that I’m not only going to finish our love duet alone but also be stranded onstage, Wes dove under the scrim stomach first, narrowly missing being crushed by the scrim and STILL SINGING! He says he felt like a baseball player — I say he looked like Shamu coming up onshore. The best part about it was the audience reaction. They honestly thought it was part of the show but that it was a bad choice. The confused applause was hysterical.
Favorite junk food: Flaming Hot Cheetos
Who would play you in the movie? Probably one of the girls from the new “90210.”
TV or commercial gig you most enjoyed: I did a guest spot on “Gossip Girl,” which was very fun. I made out with Chase Crawford, and I still get middle-aged women who come up to me and ask how it was.
Leading lady role you’ve been dying to play: Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
Your favorite Halloween costume: Last year a group of friends from The Addams Family cast, my boyfriend Noah Weisberg and I were the cast from “The Rachael Zoe Project.” I was Rachael, Noah was Roger, Clark Johnson was Taylor, Charlie Sutton was Brad and Samantha Sturm was their sad assistant Jordan. We looked SPECTACULAR. We definitely “shut it down.”
Hoda and Kathie Lee Show “The Addams Family” Some Love
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Opening Night of “The Addams Family” Musical
Opening Night … in pictures, courtesy of broadwayworld.com
“When You’re an Addams” Number
Nathan, Bebe and the cast hit it out of the park on late night TV.
The Addams Family Still In The “Million-Dollar” Club
The Addams Family musical grossed more than $1 million last week for the third week in a row! That’s great news for a show that is still in previews, and should give all concerned a bit of breathing room as they prepare for an April 8 opening.
Although last weeks gross of $1.3 million was a bit less than the previous week, The Addams Family has quickly established itself as a member of the million-dollar club on Broadway (shows that gross in the seven figures), which last week also included “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Billy Elliot: The Musical,” and “Jersey Boys.” Very good company, indeed.
The Addams Family is Headed to Hollywood!
The Addams Family is apparently headed to Hollywood!
Deadline.com is reporting that Tim Burton has his eye on The Addams Family for his next animated 3D project, following the success of Alice In Wonderland, now playing.
Writes Deadline.com: “[Burton] will direct a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams’ original ghoulish cartoon drawings of The Addams Family. Illumination Entertainment, the Universal-based family film unit headed by Chris Meledandri, has acquired the underlying rights of the Addams drawings, once a staple of The New Yorker magazine.” Burton’s film, like the Broadway in previews musical starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, will be inspired by these original drawings and will be unrelated to the previous film and television imaginings of the famous goth family.
The production is currently seeking a writer. The film will be produced by Meladandri, and Kevin Miserocchi of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation. Burton’s additional animated features include Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. He additionally wrote and produced The Nightmare Before Christmas and produced 9.
Click here to read Deadline.com article.
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)
“Charles Addams New York” Exhibit Opens at the MCNY
Last night was opening night for the new Charles Addams exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. And I happened upon this fantastic post on the EditouristNYC blog, which I have copied here verbatim – right down to the pictures. I hope you enjoy it - I know I did!
The Addams Family (image © the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation)
Andrew and I were lucky enough to score an invite to the Charles Addams’ show opening tonight, and I couldn’t be happier that we went. The exhibit is well-designed, interesting, pertinent, and extremely entertaining. I suspect I’ll be back before it ends in May.
The macabre comedic genius that is Charles Addams will never, in my opinion, be topped in the world of the print cartoon. It may seem strange to place the words “macabre” and “comedic” in such close proximity to each other, but if you have any awareness of the
Addams Family, you know what I’m saying. The exhibit places the Addams Family into a surprising context. Addams used these characters and their relations to each other to comment on the ideal nuclear family of the time. His work comments on other societal and political norms as well, from the “battle of the sexes,” to pop culture and media, to technology, to the economy, and so on.
Addams’ cartoons can easily be taken for granted: a timely joke here, an ironic, postcard-worthy cartoon there. Of course, the creation of the Addams Family was no small task. However, it wasn’t until tonight, seeing so many of his creations in one place, that I truly felt I understood the overwhelming impact of his work: It forces New Yorkers to stand back and look at themselves, for better or for worse.
And stand back and look at themselves they did. Almost as intriguing as viewing Addams’ cartoons was watching the others guests’ reactions and listening in on their discussions. It seemed that every person found something of themselves in one image or another. My favorite reactions of the night revolved around Addams’ depiction of a harried man carrying his jewelry-drenched wife into a pawn shop: “Oh, that’s horrible,” one older woman said to another, passing quickly by. Less than two minutes later, two men stopped in front of the cartoon and let out full-on belly laughs. Like it or not, Addams strikes a chord.
(image © the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation)
What I find truly amazing is how his pieces take on such contrasting tones. As Andrew and I walked around the room tonight, we found ourselves continually surprised. One image made us laugh, while the next on the wall caused us to think, “Yeah, I can relate to that,” in a sad sort of way. Specifically, Addams’ series of wind-up men, roboting around the city until winding out of energy, comes to mind. He depicts them big and small, alone on the side of the street or shuttling around in huge masses. Sure, the comparison between people and machines has been made before—who hasn’t suffered the rat-race rush through Penn Station in the morning? I know I have—but the idea of people as wind-up toys is something different, and deflating. So much of his work that was relevant during his time remains relevant today and, I suspect, will remain relevant for ages to come.
(And speaking of relevant, this night has absolutely upped my anticipation level for the new Addams Family musical.)
