If you have any hopes of enjoying "The Addams Family," check your memories at the door. Do not harbor expectations of the deliciously dry irony that animated the old TV show -- nor the deadpan satire of the droll cartoons Charles Addams sketched for the New Yorker.
The national tour that opened Tuesday at the Ordway Center in St. Paul presents the Sphinx-like Morticia with more cleavage than the Grand Canyon, Wednesday as a petulant teen and Lurch as a tall slab fresh from electroshock therapy -- or a lobotomy. Or both. Hey-oh!
Gomez (Douglas Sills) zings off one-liners like a bullfighter, a Castilian replica of Kevin Kline. At least Fester and Pugsley are still lumps. Are they quirky? Yes, but only in the bland and manufactured style of middlebrow theater.
It would be silly to expect exact fealty to a 1960s sitcom. A musical has different requirements -- enthusiasm, gusto, big smiles. I get that. But at some point, we don't know who these people are anymore. Enthusiasm? Morticia would be mortified. There are no touchstones to hang on to, and there is the phony eeriness of a Munsters reunion hanging over the whole thing.
Legendary director Jerry Zaks was brought in to retool this road version after critics carved up the show in New York. He has perhaps made chicken salad of what ran on Broadway for two years. But script writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice still have dialogue borrowed from the patterns of "Three's Company," and Andrew Lippa's music knocks off only a couple of worthwhile songs. Fester (Blake Hammond) has a sweet moment in a song about his love for the moon -- even including some stage magic. And there is a tango/flamenco tête à tête between Morticia (Sara Gettelfinger) and Gomez that at least hearkens to the Addams spirit and looks like a production number.
You'll be wondering what the plot is. Teenage Wednesday (the sassy Cortney Wolfson) is in love with Lucas (Brian Justin Crum, putting in his time). Wednesday even sings about wanting to break out of her dour self and become more like a normal person -- and she is, horrors, sincere! So, there will be a dinner at the Addams shack with Lucas's parents. Add contrivances, a couple sight gags, stir, and, in the end, love conquers all. Wha? Sentimentality in the Addams Family? Where's my nerve medicine?
The performers are doing what they were told. If you go, enjoy them for their craft and voices and characterizations -- such as they are.
Bottom line: Even when you take this show on its own terms, setting aside expectations and recollections of Addams' past, it's not very good. The ooky, kooky Addams brand has been ground in the sausage factory of 21st-century Broadway -- that cheap butcher block of lame jokes, middling songs and precious plots. Cue Lurch groaning and shaking his head.
