The Addams Family, by Andrew Lippa
Apr. 17th, 2016 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWe were back to the Berkeley Playhouse today to see The Addams Family, a broadway musical of very recent pedigree.
It was very enjoyable. I had fun the whole time, entranced by the Addams Family and their interactions with a "normal" family. However, I was also a bit surprised by the fact that the play was both unpolished and too-polished. I'm pretty surprised that the play was successful on Broadway. (Looking now after I drafted this, I see it was successful despite very bad reviews.)
The heart of the play seems to be the fun question of what's normal, and whether that's even desirable. It kicks off in Act I with "One Normal Night", where Wednesday begs her family to be normal when they meet her fiancé's family. But then the play rather delightfully undercuts our expectations by showing us her "normal" fiancé having the same conversation with his own family. Then in Act II we get a reprise of the theme with a new song called "Crazier than You" in which the aspirations toward normalcy are thrown off and everyone embraces their inner weirdo. It's nice messaging and a nice through-line for this play.
Except it's really not a through-line. The rest of the play is all over the place, talking about honesty, love, closeness, distance, and even the Moon. There are lots of good themes there, but it just feels like a mess when you jam them all together.
Meanwhile, the show also felt overworkshopped, like the creator had dutifully followed all the notes he was given to produce a soulless Broadway production. So you have numerous topical references, which are all really cheap laughs. And you have a bit of fourth wall breaking (which produces at least one well-earned laugh). And you have dances and songs in several styles, including a Tango (of course!), a ballet, and a chorus line. If you wrote a book about how to write a modern musical, I'm pretty sure that all these elements would be there.
And too often the show relies upon spectacle, going to the well of the Addams' family spookiness and kookiness to keep the audience entertained without thinking too much about it.
Still, as I said, I enjoyed the play. It was familiar and easy. It had great performances, with Wednesday being a real stand-out (and Pugsley too, but he got too little attention). The set design was also great.
I also loved once concept from the play: the chorus, which was made up of Addams ancestors. They looked great on the stage with costume design going back centuries, and this also allowed the Addams to make amusing references to their various exotic deaths.
But I suspect I'll remember very little about the play in a few weeks time.
It was very enjoyable. I had fun the whole time, entranced by the Addams Family and their interactions with a "normal" family. However, I was also a bit surprised by the fact that the play was both unpolished and too-polished. I'm pretty surprised that the play was successful on Broadway. (Looking now after I drafted this, I see it was successful despite very bad reviews.)
The heart of the play seems to be the fun question of what's normal, and whether that's even desirable. It kicks off in Act I with "One Normal Night", where Wednesday begs her family to be normal when they meet her fiancé's family. But then the play rather delightfully undercuts our expectations by showing us her "normal" fiancé having the same conversation with his own family. Then in Act II we get a reprise of the theme with a new song called "Crazier than You" in which the aspirations toward normalcy are thrown off and everyone embraces their inner weirdo. It's nice messaging and a nice through-line for this play.
Except it's really not a through-line. The rest of the play is all over the place, talking about honesty, love, closeness, distance, and even the Moon. There are lots of good themes there, but it just feels like a mess when you jam them all together.
Meanwhile, the show also felt overworkshopped, like the creator had dutifully followed all the notes he was given to produce a soulless Broadway production. So you have numerous topical references, which are all really cheap laughs. And you have a bit of fourth wall breaking (which produces at least one well-earned laugh). And you have dances and songs in several styles, including a Tango (of course!), a ballet, and a chorus line. If you wrote a book about how to write a modern musical, I'm pretty sure that all these elements would be there.
And too often the show relies upon spectacle, going to the well of the Addams' family spookiness and kookiness to keep the audience entertained without thinking too much about it.
Still, as I said, I enjoyed the play. It was familiar and easy. It had great performances, with Wednesday being a real stand-out (and Pugsley too, but he got too little attention). The set design was also great.
I also loved once concept from the play: the chorus, which was made up of Addams ancestors. They looked great on the stage with costume design going back centuries, and this also allowed the Addams to make amusing references to their various exotic deaths.
But I suspect I'll remember very little about the play in a few weeks time.