All Entries Tagged With: "Nathan Lane"
Another Look At Merwin Foard
I’ve posted a couple of interviews/articles on Merwin Foard, understudy for Gomez and Mal Beineke in The Addams Family Musical, but I think my readers can stand one more. I find Foard truly fascinating, and anyone who can go on in the lead role of a show, without a single cast rehearsal, is a hero in my book!
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Understanding Broadway: The Standby
By Frank DiLella, Theatre Producer for NY1 News
01 Jul 2010
Merwin Foard observing the performance from the backstage monitor at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
There’s a chameleon lurking in the wings over at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. No, I’m not talking about the Basil Twist creature that lives under Pugsley Addams’ bed.
Eight times a week this chameleon, known as actor Merwin Foard, sits patiently backstage, prepared to step in for Nathan Lane’s Gomez or Terrence Mann’s Mal Beineke — just in case anything goes wrong with either performer.
Foard, a longtime musical theatre vet, has spent the last few years standing by for some of Broadway’s biggest stars, from Michael Cerveris’ Sweeney in Sweeney Todd to Brian Stokes Mitchell’s Fred in Kiss Me, Kate. Foard’s new home is now with The Addams Family.
“I arrive at the theatre an hour before curtain and go to the green room, where we have a video screen of the stage,” said Foard during a recent matinee. “Once the performance begins, I watch the monitor and check for differences in choreography and blocking. Physically, I perform the show with the performers while watching it on the screen.”
Unlike a typical understudy in a Broadway musical, who also appears as a minor role in the show or in the chorus, Foard is called a standby — a role that demands an actor to literally stand by — in case a leading performer needs to miss a show or leave mid-performance.
“It’s a tricky thing to take on,” added Foard. “You have to do it all on your own. You’re subject to watch the rehearsal…but you’re rarely physically on your feet…so it requires a lot of homework you need to do privately.”
That homework came in handy out of town last fall in Chicago, where The Addams Family had its world premiere.
“It was Thanksgiving weekend and Nathan came down with bronchitis,” said Foard. “I had no rehearsal and we were in previews. All the rehearsal time had been afforded to the actual cast, so when it was announced that Nathan was going to have to miss a show, we all went into emergency mode.”
He added, “I worked with our musical director, choreographer and director to get me as physically prepared as I could be in a rehearsal studio so that I could do the next three performances.”
As for his initial reaction when he was told he was going on for the first time as Gomez? “Shock. It was so early on in the process and you can’t fault Nathan for being ill. I got into this laser focus. You say to yourself: ‘[I] have to do it’ — because the only other option is to cancel the performance.”
It also helps to get support from the show’s leading lady, Bebe Neuwirth. “Bebe was fantastic. She was there to rehearse scenes and choreography.”
And while this chameleon, who calls himself “the Swiss army knife of Broadway,” has made a career of standing by for some of Broadway’s finest, he says he hopes to continue to shed layers, looking forward to new experiences on The Great White Way.
“Of course it’s nice to be thought of as a dependable back-up. But I’m anxious to have a role outright and not have to split focus.”
Nathan Lane is Broadway.com’s #1 Superstar of the Decade
Broadway.com at 10: Top 10 Stage Superstars of the Decade
Features By Kathy Henderson, May 18, 2010
In the same way that Angelina or George Clooney can “open” a movie, a very short list of theater actors have the star power to attract producers (and audiences) on the strength of their name and talent alone. Broadway.com’s tenth anniversary is the perfect time to pay tribute to 10 stage superstars of the past decade—and to thank them for their loyalty to the Great White Way.
1. Nathan Lane
To borrow a lyric from his Tony-winning character Max Bialystock, Nathan Lane reigns as “the king of old Broadway.” After his triumph in The Producers (2001), Lane could have coasted through his pick of musical revivals, but he’s insisted on stretching his outsize talent in an impressive series of shows with nothing in common beyond his desire to bring them to Broadway: his own adaptation of The Frogs (2004), a smash-hit revival of The Odd Couple (2006), a black-comedy turn in Butley (2006), David Mamet’s satirical November (2008), an acclaimed revival of Waiting for Godot (2009) and now an irresistible performance as Gomez in the new musical The Addams Family. Wow! Where Nathan goes, audiences follow.
The following actors finish the list. To read the entire article, click here.
2. Patti Lupone
3. Kristin Chenoweth
4. Harvey Fierstein
5. Hugh Jackman
6. Liev Schreiber
7. Laura Linney
8. Angela Lansbury
9. Audra McDonald
10. Mary-Louise Parker
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 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” – WORD OF MOUTH
The Addams Family can’t rely on the critics, so it’s up to the fans of the show to show their support through WORD OF MOUTH.
CLICK HERE to visit the WORD OF MOUTH post. Scroll to the bottom and click “Comments” to share your thoughts or experiences of “The Addams Family” on Broadway, and to read others’ experiences.
“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
Critics Aren’t Raving, but Audiences Love The Addams Family!
Yes, it is every producer’s goal to win the approval of the critics, but ultimately it’s up to the “real” people, the audiences, the ticket purchasing public to make or break a show. And from what I’ve read, audiences are LOVING the kooky Addams Family musical. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what makes a successful show - audiences that walk out of the theatre smiling and humming and happy? So if the creative team of the Addams Family musical can’t rely on the critics, then it’s up to the fans to show their support through WORD OF MOUTH.
Below is the “Word of Mouth” Review from Broadway.com, where REAL people review the show.
If you’ve seen the show, or just want to offer your support of the show, please leave a comment here and let the world know how you feel about The Addams Family on Broadway. And if you have pictures you’d like to share, please e-mail them to afblog@comcast.net, and I’ll get them put up here.
(Comments are threaded, so you can leave a “stand alone” comment, or reply to someone else’s comment.)
Don’t Miss Nathan Lane on Letterman Tonight!
Nathan Lane arrives at The Late Show studio
Tonight (Friday, April 2), Nathan Lane joins Dave on The Late Show With David Letterman. And tune in again on Tuesday, April 6 to catch the cast of The Addams Family perform!
Merwin Foard Happy To Be “The Guy Who Isn’t Nathan Lane”
Foard (left) starred as Lancelot in a regional production of Camelot with Terrence Mann (right) as Arthur. Mann, who originated the role of Javert in Les Misérables on Broadway encouraged Foard to audition for the role.
Broadway’s #1 Backup Plan
Written by Bryan Reesman
Mar 23, 2010
Merwin Foard keeps going on Broadway by making sure the Broadway show goes on.
He has had one of the most enduring and consistent Broadway careers of the last three decades, yet Merwin Foard may not be the most recognizable face on the Great White Way. The reason is simple: While Foard has performed his fair share of supporting roles and ensemble work, he is now regularly a standby or understudy for leading parts. He’s the one waiting in wings in case the lead happens to fall ill or cannot perform for any reason, occasionally balancing that with ensemble parts. His fourteenth and latest Broadway gig is as both Nathan Lane and Terence Mann’s understudy for The Addams Family, which recently opened in New York after an out-of-town run in Chicago. Foard has become Broadway’s seasoned back-up man, and he has fashioned a career from this unusual position.
Rebecca and Merwin Foard
Throughout the last decade Foard has landed a mixture of ensemble, understudy and replacement supporting roles in shows like The Little Mermaid, Assassins, Sweeney Todd and Kiss Me, Kate. As he will readily attest, it’s a fun life. Prior to The Addams Family invading the Great White Way, Foard spoke to Stage Directions about his history, the twists and turns of his highly unusual career path, juggling professional work with family time (he is married with two daughters, aged 11 and 16) and how he has sustained and evolved his craft over three decades.
Stage Directions: You’ve been an ensemble player for many shows, and you are the main understudy on Broadway lately.
Merwin Foard: I’m like the main second guy on Broadway. This is the third show I’ve been a standby for which I’m not in the ensemble. I’m a peripheral person on a contract, but if the star is down I’ll step in for them. Before Addams Family was the Sweeney Todd revival where all the actors played instruments, and before that was the Kiss Me, Kate revival, where I stood by for Brian Stokes Mitchell and Ron Holgate. Nathan Lane and Terrence Mann, who I standby for in Addams Family, are my 24th and 25th actors who I have either stood by for or understudied on Broadway.
Ultimately, what is that experience like?
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.”
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.
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)
