Modern take on family ticks boxes, loses plot

ONE is asked to set aside 2 1/2 hours for a plot that would scarcely stretch to 26 minutes on the box.

The Addams Family

THE Addams Family is helpfully subtitled The Broadway Musical, in case you thought you were seeing a play based on the 1960s television series. If only that were so. Instead one is asked to set aside 2 1/2 hours for a plot that would scarcely stretch to 26 minutes on the box.

I call it a plot for convenience; it's a contrivance. Wednesday Addams, all grown up, wants to marry a nice boy and wishes to bring together his straitlaced family and her kooky one for dinner. Cue misunderstandings and trust hilarity will ensue.

One can understand Broadway wanting to appropriate Charles Addams's cool, witty, subversive characters -- there for the taking, really, along with the bonus of the brilliant TV theme music. That four-note, two-snap intro has the audience on board from the get-go. But it's hard to think of a more "who cares?" idea than throwing two disparate families together, even if it were done in a fresh and amusing manner, which it isn't.

Writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, whose Jersey Boys was such a delight, have managed to come up with characters who are sketchier in three dimensions than in the original New Yorker cartoons. Morticia's long, tight gown, Gomez's uxoriousness, Pugsley's affection for torture, Lurch's growl, Fester's lightbulb moments, a cameo appearance by Cousin Itt -- they all tick boxes of recognition without adding a skerrick of story. Andrew Lippa's songs are pleasant enough but also move nothing forward.

In the space where action might normally be there are pop-culture gags (a Charlie Sheen mention predictably gets a big response), heavy-handed jokes and sexual references for the grown-ups. They include a monumentally off-colour remark from Grandma, an example of The Addams Family's oddly shifting tone. Perhaps it's best to think of it as a series of extremely expensively produced cabaret acts -- it certainly looks splendid -- rather than a tightly structured dramatic work.

John Waters as Gomez and Chloe Dallimore as Morticia lead an expert cast including Teagan Wouters in fine voice as Wednesday. Best is Russell Dykstra, who finds some much-needed sweetness and nuance in Uncle Fester. Mostly, though, what I saw on opening night was smoke and mirrors, painting by numbers, buttons pushed. Most dispiriting.

Tickets: $49-$149. Bookings: 1300 723 038.

MUSICAL THEATRE
The Addams Family.
Capitol Theatre, Sydney, March 23.