Theater review: The Addams Family
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"The show has never been better sung."
The cast of Media Theatre's "The Addams Family."
Chris Jordan
Chris Jordan
Sometimes, it’s all about the cast.
That’s been the story from the start for Andrew Lippa, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s The Addams Family musical. Its original Broadway production got the kind of New York Times review that usually closes a show. But thanks to glamorous power-casting in the principal roles (Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane; later, Brooke Shields and Roger Rees), and fine supporting actors, The Addams Family had a more than respectable run of nearly two years.
The cast is the great story at Media, too — across the board, they’re first rate. In fact, I’m willing to bet the show has never been better sung. For the singer-actors’ contributions alone, this is a must-see.
I expected Jeff Coon to fill the room with lustrous tone and boyish charm (and he did). But in the character part of Gomez, he also displayed a new confidence and slyness. Coon looked like a happy man — but how could he be otherwise, playing opposite the ravishing Jennie Eisenhower, who shimmered with sex appeal, sang superbly and delivered the comedy with surgical precision. As their daughter, Wednesday, Lauren Cupples looks suitably like a sullen teenager, and sounds like a rising Broadway star. The delightful Kristine Fraelich nearly steals the show with her big number. Fester, Pugsley, Lurch, Grandmama — all terrific, as is the endearingly daft ensemble.
And the musical itself? It’s not so much a disaster as a disappointment. Brickman and Elice’s book is almost more Frankenstein than Addams Family, in that it seems uneasily stitched together from borrowed pieces. Lippa tries to give his music and lyrics an individual profile — there are Latin dance rhythms to evoke Gomez’s Spanish roots, for example — but though some of it is tuneful, none of it is memorable. Fundamentally, everything about the writing is too broad and jokey to capture the sublime drollery of the Charles Addams’ cartoons that inspired it.
But keep your eyes on Coon, Eisenhower and company, and you won’t mind a bit. Don’t just take my word for it — the person who saw The Addams Family with me is not in the theater, but none-theless, highly opinionated and often critical. At intermission, he looked at me with astonishment and asked, “The cast really couldn’t be better, could they?”
Through Nov. 2, Media Theatre, 104 E. State St., Media, Pa., 610-891-0100, mediatheatre.org.
