All Entries Tagged With: "Lunt-Fontanne Theatre"
The Addams Family Nominated for Drama League Awards
Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth announced Drama League Award nominees, live at Sardi's
On April 20, 2010, Bebe Neuwirth (The Addams Family) and Kelsey Grammer (La Cage aux Folles) announced nominations for the 76th Annual Drama League Awards, to be presented at a ceremony and luncheon May 21 in the Grand Ballroom of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square.
Among this year’s nominees:
DISTINGUISHED PRODUCTION OF A MUSICAL
The Addams Family
Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice; Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre)
DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE AWARD
Nathan Lane, The Addams Family
In addition to this year’s nominees, nine past recipients of the Distinguished Performance Award will be honored for their work this season. However, because an individual can only receive the Distinguished Performance Award once in his/her lifetime, they are ineligible for award consideration this year. Among those past honorees will be Bebe Neuwirth of The Addams Family.
The Drama League announced earlier this Spring that among it’s special recognitions, Nathan Lane will receive the Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award.
Great honors, indeed. Congratulations to The Addams Family!
Click here to view a list of all nominees.
“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.
Opening Night of “The Addams Family” Musical
Opening Night … in pictures, courtesy of broadwayworld.com
Carolee Carmello Shares Her Cozy Addams Family Digs
from Broadway.com
Carolee Carmello, the flame-haired two-time Tony nominee, certainly knows how to make herself at home in a Broadway dressing room. The constantly working actress has inhabited a series of them in such diverse shows as City of Angels, Falsettos, 1776, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Parade, Kiss Me, Kate, Urinetown, Lestat and multiple stints in Mamma Mia!. Now Carmello has moved into a rosy (“the color is calming,” she notes) dressing room at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where she is appearing as Alice Beineke, an uptight suburban mom at odds with the kooky, macabre family of the title, in the new musical comedy The Addams Family. The performer welcomed Broadway.com to her girly digs to show off five of her favorite personal items. Take a look!
“I included my wig [on this list] because whenever I am trying to figure out a character or work on a new part, the hair is always the key for me. Even from the very first audition, I like to figure out what the hair is going to be. Everything falls from the hair. I work from the outside in.”
“My family photos are here to remind me of the most important part of my life. They put everything into perspective.” [Pictured: Broadway actor Gregg Edelman and children Zoe and Ethan.]
“My laptop is my entertainment when I am offstage during the show: I like to play Scrabble and check my email. Right now, I am helping to work on a new website: www.caroleecarmello.com, which is launching in April, so I’m using it for that, too.”
“My running shoes are important because on these long days at the theater, I like to go running on my dinner break. It clears my head and forces me to use my dinner break for more than just eating dinner.”
“I made this silly, little table skirt about 11 or 12 years ago when I was doing 1776 at the Gershwin, and I’ve used it in all my dressing rooms since then. It’s kind of sentimental, but it also makes for great storage and hides a myriad of sins.”
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
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.
New Start Date For Addams Family Previews on Broadway
Previews for the new Addams Family Musical at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway will begin on Monday, March 8. Tickets had previously been on sale beginning on Thursday, March 4, but shows on March 4, 5 & 6 are now listed as cancelled . The date for opening night remains Thursday, April 8.
Click here to visit the Lunt-Fontanne website.
