Next spring, Broadway will see a very interesting musical: The Addams Family. Written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party at MTC), the musical will bow at a Nederlander theater to be announced on April 8, 2010.
Given that it is premiering almost a year from now, you might ask why I am talking about this now. Musicals have always got their subject matter from various sources. One source that is rarely tapped is television shows. This seems like a no brainer, being that most television shows are episodic and have too large a through line for musical adaptation. It takes an especially popular and marketable property to make a successful television to musical adaptation.
The most recent example of this was Happy Days the Musical. Based off the popular television show, Fonzie and the gang were elevated to the musical stage by series creator Garry Marshall and composer Paul Williams. Despite a lack of rave reviews, the show played two engagements at the Goodspeed Opera House and launched a national tour after a production at Paper Mill Playhouse.
The Addams Family is intriguing in that although it is best remembered as a television show, the characters are based off the sketches and drawings that Charles Addams submitted to The New Yorker. According to Playbill.com, the musical “is not based on past Addams Family properties, but uses characters created by legendary cartoonist Charles Addams. The Addams illustrations inspired a TV sitcom, a TV cartoon series and two live-action feature film comedies.”
So there are some big questions this musical is going to run into is: what characters are the audience going to expect? Do the authors feel a responsibility to treat the characters as television audiences experienced them? Even more interesting, will they attempt to redefine the perception of these characters by writing them in an original manner.
I’m sure hoping that they address the musical characters in the way my third question implies. Since they are not trying to adapt a specific episode or a specific Addams family tale, I hope that they will use the wonderful skeleton of these characters and give them new life in the musical form. They certainly seem to be on the right track, especially with casting talent like Nathan Lane, Terrance Mann, Carolee Carmello and Jackie Hoffman. Who knows? The success of this musical could lead to more television show characters being examined on the musical stage.
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