They've been a panel cartoon, a TV show, two movies, an animated cartoon and now a stage musical. We need only await "The Addams Family opera" to complete our entertainment menu about Gomez, Morticia and their ooky, kooky clan. (Producers, please note: That opera idea is mine and I want a cut.)
Twin Cities audiences get their first local look at the musical on Tuesday when the national tour lands at the Ordway Center in St. Paul. Critics were thoroughly dismissive when the show opened in 2010 with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, Broadway royalty both, headlining the cast. The gibes, however, did not prevent the show from running for nearly two years; such is the allure of these silly and macabre characters.
"We've been drawn to the dark side," said actor Douglas Sills, who plays Gomez on the tour. "We're fascinated and frightened, and when we examine it in safe settings like comedy, it becomes less scary."
Well. There was never anything you might term scary in the 150 panel cartoons that Charles Addams penned for the New Yorker magazine. Same with the TV show, which ran from 1964 to 1966 and gave names to the family members and brought them to audiences who thought the New Yorker was a fancy automobile.
The humor landed in its twisted and wry glances at ordinary situations. This was a family of modest people who paid their taxes, sent their children to school and welcomed neighbors into their home. But where we might sunbathe; they moon-bathed. We would cultivate rose blooms; Morticia admired a vase of thorny stems. Cute little Wednesday favored a headless doll she called Marie Antoinette. And how could you not love Uncle Fester, a bald guy who put lightbulbs in his mouth and lit up a room?
The franchise spawned a different vision of the family in two early-1990s movies, starring Raúl Julia and Anjelica Huston. The musical went back to the original cartoons as source material, but the images from popular culture are indelible.
Sills, who lives in Los Angeles, played the title role when "The Scarlet Pimpernel" came to the Ordway in 2000. He was Tony-nominated for the role when the show was on Broadway. He has also toured with "Into the Woods" and "The Secret Garden."
In an interview, Sills said he did not pore over the work of past masters such as John Astin, Julia and Lane when he fashioned his version of Gomez Addams. He never saw the movies, but TV reruns fed his head as a child and he watched Roger Rees' version on Broadway after Lane left the show.
